



/^/7 



IMPERIAL GERMANY 




Photo : Ratipp, Darmstadt 

PRINCE BERNHARD VON BULOW 



Imperial Germany 



BY 

PRINCE VON BiJLOW 



With a Foreword by 
J. W. HEADLAM 



Translation by MARIE A. LEWENZ, M.A. 



New and Revised Edition 



New York 
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 

1917 



^^. 



\ 



A 



% 



^l'" 









PUBLISHERS' NOTE 

This is the first book printed in the British Empire by 
licence of the Comptroller-General of Patents under the 
Trading with the Enemy (Copyright) Act, 1916. 

In the autumn of 1913 the copyright of "Imperial 
Germany," by Prince von Billow, was acquired by the 
House of Cassell for the British Empire. The volume 
was published in January, 1914. After the outbreak of 
war a cheap popular edition was issued, and eight 
impressions were printed. 

In the early summer of this year Prince Biilow 
issued a revised edition in Germany, and negotiations 
were concluded for the purchase of the British rights in 
the new matter from a Dutch firm who had acquired 
them from Prince BUlow's publisher. This transaction 
became null and void through the passing of the above- 
mentioned Act, which vested in the Public Trustee the 
British copyright of all works published in Germany 
since August 4, 1914. Hence the need for the licence, 
v/hich w^as duly granted on October 5, 19 16. 

More than one-half of the letterpress of the original 
volume has been re-written, and for the assistance of 
the historical student and the guidance of the general 
reader the new passages are indicated in the present 
volume by brackets. 

The Introduction by Prince Biilow is entirely new, 
and so are the two chapters on Militarism and the 
chapter on the Social Democrats. The latter part of 
the Conclusion, in which the author advances the 
argument that "dogmatic adherence to principles is 
mischievous," is also new. 



FOREWORD 

By J. W. HEADLAM 

This book, of which Miss Lewenz has made so admir- 
able a translation, is one which is assured of a per- 
manent place in political literature, whether because 
of the author, the occasion, or the subject; for it is 
an attempt to explain and justify the policy of the Ger- 
man Empire in the years immediately preceding the 
outbreak of the present war by the most distinguished 
of modern German statesmen, and one who was him- 
self responsible for the events which he describes. 

Prince Bulow was, from 1897 to 1909, responsible 
for the control of the Foreign Office of Germany, first 
as Secretary of State, a post which his father had held 
before him; afterwards he was appointed to succeed 
Prince Hohenlohe as Chancellor, and he held the 
highest position in the German Empire with marked 
personal distinction for nine years. The twelve years 
during which he held high office were of supreme im- 
portance, for it is during this period that took place that 
great diplomatic revolution, to which, so far as I know, 
there is no parallel in the history of Modern Europe. 

For this revolution Prince Biilow was more than 
any other man (except the German Emperor) immedi- 
ately and personally responsible; for it was the re- 
action on the relation of European States of the adoption 
by the Germans of that which they call " Welt-Politik." 

vii 



Foreword 

The series of chapters which he devotes to foreign 
policy is in fact a defence of ''Welt-Politik." It is 
a defence which is necessary ; for " Welt-Politik " meant 
in his eyes the building of the German Fleet, and the 
German Fleet, with its avowed challenge to the secular 
policy of Great Britain, meant the estrangement of 
England and Germany, and as has now been made 
clear to all, the estrangement from England meant the 
almost complete isolation of Germany in Europe. 

If we are to understand the book, we must recall 
the circumstances in which it was originally written, 
circumstances very different from those in which the 
new edition appears. It belonged to the halcyon 
years before the storm. It was written as a section 
in an important general work compiled to com- 
memorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the accession 
of the present Emperor; but the end of the quarter of 
the century of his reign coincided with the centenary 
of the great war against France, from which modern 
Germany took its birth, and there breathes throughout 
the pages the intense national self-confidence, the 
natural pride belonging to a year of great memories, 
and one which was to be the last year of the Augustan 
Age of modern Germany. M. Cambon has shown with 
admirable skill how greatly the spirit of this double 
anniversary contributed to arouse in the German nation 
the passions which were the immediate cause of and 
found their expression in the present war. 

Prince Biilow used the opportunity not for what 
would have been perhaps the easier and less dangerous 
course, of writing a general impersonal and historical 
sketch of the political development of Germany during 

viii 



Foreword 

the last twenty-five years; he preferred to make it 
largely a defence and apology of his own action during 
the years he had held office, and an exposition of 
the principles by which he had been guided. It is 
not often that men who have played a great part in 
public affairs have themselves given an account of their 
motives and actions; those who have done so, and 
among them we may reckon the two greatest of modern 
statesmen, Richelieu and Bismarck, at least waited 
until their public career was closed. Richelieu's 
Memoirs, perhaps to this day the greatest mine of 
political wisdom, were not published until many years 
after his death, and, as we all know, Bismarck's 
Reminiscences, which were dictated to his secretaries 
during the few years which elapsed between his retire- 
ment and his death, were also not published until his 
death had taken place. Prince Biilow has been, if not 
wiser, at least bolder, and he has not shrunk from 
challenging the judgment of his contemporaries by 
publishing his apologia at a time when he might still 
look forward to many years of activity. The gain, 
at least, is ours, for in these pages we can read a pic- 
ture of German policy, I will not say as it appeared 
to those behind the scenes, but as the most dis- 
tinguished author of that policy wished that it should 
seem to have appeared. 

There is scarcely a page in which the book does not 
challenge comparison with Bismarck's Memoirs, just 
as his own defence of his policy inevitably condemns 
him to be judged by a comparison with the work of his 
master. But in such a work, written at such a time, 
we cannot expect that complete frankness which is 

ix 



Foreword 

characteristic both of Richelieu and of Bismarck. In 
particular, readers will recall how much of their interest 
and value both these works owe to the clearness with 
which they explained the difficulties which arose in 
winning over the assent of the Sovereign to the policy 
of his minister. This is a topic which is naturally closed 
to Prince Biilow; but we may easily do him injustice 
unless we recollect that the Emperor whom he served 
was neither a Louis XIII. nor a William I., and the 
final breach which in reality brought about the Prince's 
resignation, a breach ultimately due to the extraordinary 
indiscretion of the famous Daily Telegraph interview, 
was, as was well known to his intimates, merely the 
last of the many embarrassments that the spasmodic and 
emotional interferences of the Emperor had caused in 
the management of affairs. It is to the Emperor as 
much as to the country that many of the wise warnings 
which the book contains, might well have been, and 
perhaps were, intended to be addressed. 

In its original form the book naturally attracted 
great attention, both in Germany and in other countries. 
But while it was freely accessible elsewhere, it was only 
available in Germany as part of the larger and more 
expensive work in which it had originally appeared. 
It was naturally desired to make it more freely acces- 
sible to those for whom it had been originally written. 
But before the time came for this the circumstances 
had altered. The outbreak of the war threw all that 
had preceded it into a new light, and it has been largely 
altered to meet the new conditions. A comparison of 
the work in its two forms would repay careful study, 
for it would show the truth that the outbreak of war 

X 



Foreword 

had in fact completely falsified the thesis which was 
the chief text of the original edition. 

When Prince Biilow first wrote in 19 13 it was still 
possible for him to maintain the illusion that he, within 
the sphere of foreign policy, had left Germany 
stronger than he found her. This illusion has now 
been rudely shattered, for the very fact of the outbreak 
of a war in which Germany found herself opposed by 
the strongest coalition which has ever been formed 
since the time of the great coalition before which 
Napoleon fell, was in itself the strongest condemnation 
of his diplomatic work. All his skill in dialectic is 
unable to conceal the obvious facts of history, and it 
cannot deceive the world as to the complete failure of 
the system with which his name is associated. 

In order to show this it is only necessary to com- 
pare the position of Germany in Europe as it was left 
by Bismarck and as it was, at either the year of the 
Prince's retirement, or the outbreak of war in 19 14. 
This comparison is quite independent of the success 
or failure of Germany in the war. The object of 
diplomacy is to avoid unnecessary conflicts, and above 
all to ensure that if a war ensues it should be fought 
under favourable conditions ; any success which Ger- 
many might have secured in this war would have been 
won entirely owing to the strength of the German 
Army, the skill of the generals and the courage of the 
soldiers; it would have owed nothing to the diplomatic 
preparation, for the diplomatic preparation had brought 
it about that Germany entered on the war under circum- 
stances the most unfavourable that could be conceived ; 
and this is the result of Prince Billow's work. 

xi 



Foreword 

When Prince Bismarck retired twenty years after 
the establishment of the Empire, he left his country, 
as it seemed, fully secured from any external attack. 
The basis of its position was the close alliance with 
Austria; into this alliance Italy had been brought; and 
these three Powers together were sufficient to give 
Germany an almost assured success in any Continental 
struggle. But this was not sufficient. In the face of 
the greatest difficulties he had succeeded in maintain- 
ing co-operation with Russia, and the position in the 
Balkans was further secured by an alliance with Rou- 
mania. In addition to this, England, though standing 
aloof from Continental affairs, was, notwithstanding 
occasional friction arising from the beginnings of Ger- 
man Colonial enterprise, very friendly to the Triple 
Alliance. Bismarck, in fact, had always seen to it that 
Colonial enterprise should never be pursued beyond 
that point which would throw England into definite 
opposition. Everything had been done to obtain for 
the new Empire a permanent position of security. 

If we pass over twenty years, what do we find ? The 
alliance with Austria indeed continues; everything else 
is changed. The lapse of the Reinsurance treaty with 
Russia had at once been followed by the establishment 
of that alliance between Russia and France which had 
been prophesied ever since 1870, and which it was the 
chief effort of Bismarck to avoid. France, therefore, 
was no longer isolated. While preserving her general 
distrust and aloofness from Germany, she was able once 
more, with full confidence, to take her place in the 
councils of the European Powers. For this, Prince 
Billow himself shares no responsibility. But this was 

xii 



Foreword 

not all. Even more important was the changed position 
of England. Instead of being almost a passive partner 
in the Triple Alliance, she had now become an active 
and energetic friend of the opposing union. This 
changed attitude of England had inevitably affected the 
position of Italy. The relations of Italy to Austria 
and Germany and her position in the Triple Alliance 
have been the subject of constant controversy and dis- 
cussion during the last ten years. From all this there 
emerges one fundamental truth, that in a European 
war it would be impossible for Italy to take her place 
in opposition to the two liberal and maritime Powers of 
the West. Though many years were to elapse before 
the crisis came, the events of 1904-5 had in reality de- 
stroyed the Triple Alliance. From that time onwards 
Germany could no longer depend on Italian support, 
and as Prince Billow himself says, the traditional rela- 
tions of Italy and Austria were such that they must be 
either allies or enemies. To set off" against this, there 
was nothing except the friendship with Turkey. The 
net result was that Germany, instead of enjoying full 
and complete security, had been brought into a position 
of almost complete isolation. 

And if the alliance with Austria continued, the 
isolation of Germany had caused it to change its 
character. Nothing is more remarkable in recent events 
than the apparent helplessness shown by Germany 
when Austria undertook moves in the Balkans, 
which obviously must have been inconvenient to 
her ally. The action of Count d*Aehrenthal in 
1909 was, in fact, almost an insult to Germany. 
There can be litde doubt now that he proceeded 

xiii 



Foreword 

to the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina with- 
out consulting Germany, and although he knew that 
by doing so he would place her in an extremely 
difficult position as regards Turkey. One of the most 
plausible explanations of his action, indeed, was that 
he wished, by a definite and dramatic stroke, to establish 
Austrian independence and to repudiate the idea that 
Austria was in any way under German tutelage or 
patronage. He was able to do this because the con- 
tinuance of the alliance with Austria had now become 
absolutely necessary to Germany ; it was the only hold 
that she had left. This is shown by the subsequent 
course of the crisis. Germany had been treated with 
scant consideration ; the German Government dis- 
approved of the manner in which the annexation was 
carried through. And yet, as events show, Germany 
was forced against her better judgment to give her full 
and complete support to Austria, and thereby to bring 
herself into the danger of an acute diplomatic conflict 
with England, France and Russia. Her motives for 
this, which were publicly avowed at the time, were 
sufficient; Germany could no longer exist if Austria 
were in any way weakened, or if Austrian confidence in 
German support was undermined. She had, therefore, 
to pledge her support in a conflict which was not her 
own, and in a manner which called forth strong pro- 
tests in all the independent German papers. Future 
historians will not confirm the self-complacent account 
of this affair given by the author. 

The contrast speaks for itself, and it is sufficient 
comment on the claims made by Biilow that he was 
following a Bismarckian policy. In truth, though his 

"iv 



Foreword 

policy was in appearance Bismarckian, in its essence it 
was just the reverse. The Nelson touch is not easy to 
imitate. Bismarckian may be as far removed from 
Bismarck as Hellenism from Hellas. As in all copies, 
it is the appearance, the mannerism, the faults, the 
excesses, which are most easily adopted. 

What was the essence of Bismarck's policy,' i.e. the 
system of Bismarck's old age, with which at the 
moment we are alone concerned? Its essential basis 
was that it was adapted for a period of quiescence; it 
was that suited to a state which desired nothing but 
the maintenance of the status quo. All is summed up 
in the words so often quoted, that Germany was a 
/'satiated State." The whole object of Bismarck in 
his later years was so to arrange matters that Germany 
might be free from the danger of attack by a hostile 
coalition. From Germany no disturbance of the peace 
need be feared, for Germany had nothing which she 
desired, and from Germany, therefore, the other nations 
had nothing to fear. But it resulted from this that 
Germany was able to recognise, and within limits to 
assist the attainment of the objects of the ambition of 
every other State. Prince Billow illustrates this in a 
saying which he quotes from Bismarck: **In Serbia I 
am an Austrian, in Bulgaria I am Russian, in Egypt 
I am English." It was just for this reason that all 
countries in Europe, not only Austria, but also Russia 
and England, were willing to acquiesce in German 
predominance and in Bismarck's position as general 
referee in all European complications. Nothing is so 
striking in his later years as the way in which states- 
men of all other countries were willing to go to him 
b XV 



Foreword 

for assistance and advice. They could do so because 
they knew that as Germany was not at the time an 
aggressive State, he could look with something of an 
impartial eye on the ambitions of the others. 

But what had this Germany of Bismarck to do with 
the Germany of the new century ? Germany was no 
longer a satiated State. It had become an ambitious 
nation, full of intense claims for increased power and 
additional territory. Germany might, indeed, remain 
Austrian in Serbia, but she was no longer Russian in 
Bulgaria, she was no longer English in Egypt. We 
all know how much England depended on German 
support during the critical years when her position in 
Egypt was being established. Now we have come to a 
time when Germany herself has her own ambitions in 
the East, and when she is beginning to regard it as 
her mission eventually to expel England from Egypt, 
and by an alliance with Turkey to step herself into the 
position thus evacuated. 

The new ambitions required a new system of foreign 
policy; the situation had again become such as it was 
when the Prussia of the 'sixties was asserting herself in 
Europe. If he wanted to imitate Bismarck, it is to the 
first period of his active manhood that Biilow should 
have gone. Had he done so he would not have had to 
bear on his shoulders the responsibility for the troubles 
and sorrows which have come on Germany. 

It is not unfair to suggest that German policy was 
in the last resort governed by a phrase. Can we 
imagine Bismarck talking about " Welt-Politik " ? We 
can easily imagine him setting to work to further Ger- 
man power outside Europe; we can imagine the care 

xvi 



Foreword 

with which he would have prepared the ground, the 
foresight with which he w'ould have arranged his alli- 
ances, the strict reserve and limitations that he would 
have placed on his aims, the ruthlessness wdth w^hich 
he would have crushed popular clamour for all acces- 
sions which lay outside the field that he had marked 
out for himself, the scorn with which he would have 
treated the professors and journalists who tried to divert 
the aims outside those that he had laid down. Prussia, 
like every State that has achieved great things in the 
world, has grown by doing one thing, and fight- 
ing one enemy, at a time. Bismarck did not attempt 
to unify Germany till he had conquered North Ger- 
many, and before the conquest came the Customs 
Union. He did not attack Austria till he was fully 
assured of the alliance of Italy, and if need w^as of 
Hungary, as well as of the benevolent neutrality of 
France. He would not have challenged England by 
the building of the fleet unless he was assured of the 
good will of Russia, nor would he have "let loose 
Austria on Serbia " unless he knew that England and 
France would stand aloof. He would have seen that to 
talk of " Welt-Politik " was merely to throw- out a 
gratuitous challenge and to alarm every nation on earth. 
The fatal fault of Germany is that during the last 
tw^enty years she has pursued an ambitious policy at 
the same time in every quarter of the globe — on the 
Atlantic, in Africa, in the Near East and in the Pacific. 
Her Pacific policy entangled her with Japan, and she 
lost by her interference in 1897 ^^e good will which she 
had previously acquired. In Morocco she stirred up 
again the slumbering embers of French hostility; her 

xvii 



Foreword 

Atlantic policy brought her into conflict with England ; 
her Eastern with Russia. Entering on the untravelled 
and uncharted stage of world policy, she brought it 
about that she had no friend or ally except Austria, 
the only Great Power of Europe whose strength and 
ambitions are entirely confined to the Continent. It 
is this divergence of effort which ruined German 
foreign policy, as it is the divided military effort which 
is destroying Germany in the war. For war is the con- 
tinuation of policy, and the dilemma in which the Ger- 
man High Command is entangled when it has to fight 
on three fronts, is merely the continuation of the burden 
left by an ambitious and uncontrolled foreign policy. 

We know that there were in Germany two schools of 
thought, of which one was primarily interested in the 
Balkans, the other in the development of sea power. 
Both used their influence on the Government. The 
situation was not an easy one, but it should have been 
foreseen that disaster would come if the Government 
were not strong enough to concentrate its efforts on one 
or the other and to insist that success could only be 
obtained on this condition. 

From what little we know of the internal conditions, 
we may probably say that Prince Biilow was chiefly 
interested in the oceanic development. Herr von Kid- 
derlin Waechter, who at the end of his period of office 
was becoming one of the most influential of German 
statesmen, was in favour of the Eastern sphere, as of 
course was Marschall von Bieberstein. But there was no 
man strong enough to insist on the necessary limitation 
and concentration. The man who ought to have done 
so, the only man who had the necessary authority, the 

xviii 



Foreword 

Emperor, was above all others responsible for the 
neglect of this elementary precaution. 

No passage in this book is more instructive than 
that in which the author recounts a conversation with 
Baron Marschall von Bieberstein, in which that dis- 
tinguished diplomatist said : "If despite Damascus and 
Tangiers we give up Morocco, with one blow we lose 
our position in Turkey, and with it the advantages and 
prospects that we have gained by our laborious work 
of years." What this shows is that the work that was 
being done in Turkey was of such a kind that it could 
not be brought to a successful conclusion unless it was 
for the time made the sole and governing line of 
development. 

But how could this be reconciled with the policy 
which allowed the Emperor to go to Tangiers, an act 
for which Prince Biilow claims full responsibility ? For 
that was naturally interpreted by the nation as the 
putting forward of a claim to a share in Morocco. They 
could not understand a policy which pledged the whole 
strength of Germany, but not for the acquisition of 
territory and power.- All that the blow, in fact, 
achieved was to cement the alliance between England 
and France. 

The, more closely we examine the history of the 
present century the clearer it becomes that all turns on 
the relations of Germany and England, and these are 
conditioned entirely by the new situation created by the 
building of the German fleet. Most German writers 
dealing with these matters have chosen to forget that 
this struggle, at first diplomatic and afterwards mili- 

xix 



Foreword 

tary, was entirely caused by their own acts. In this 
Prince Biilow is juster; he knows better; he does not 
attempt to obscure the motives of the change which he 
had brought about by his naval policy; he sees and 
acknowledges that English opposition was more 
moderate in its form than he had any right to expect. 
He discusses these matters with a sanity and reasonable- 
ness which stand in marked contrast to nearly all that 
comes to us from Germany, whether in the official pro- 
nouncements of the Government or in the scarcely more 
fantastic utterances of the leaders in politics and letters. 
We can be grateful to him that he at any rate does not 
cease to write as a gentleman and man of the world. 

But the recognition of this will not obscure the 
essential weakness and fallacies which run through his 
exposition. He takes credit to himself for having 
passed safely through the critical years when the 
fleet was in the process of creation. His self- 
congratulation is premature; he affected to believe 
that the suspicions and just apprehension aroused by 
his naval policy would cease when the fleet was com- 
pleted, and that England could be either cajoled or 
frightened into an alliance. In the same way he seems 
to have thought that his theatrical and quite unnecessary 
ultimatum to Russia in 1909 would be the beginnings 
of a new and more cordial understanding. In both 
cases his thought was on the surface of things. The 
fundamental conflict of interest could not in either 
case be so easily painted over. An alliance with Russia 
could only be secured by the surrender of their forward 
policy in the Balkans, to which Germany had been irre- 
vocably committed by the words and acts of the 

XX 



Foreword 

Emperor; an understanding with England could only 
be attained by the genuine repudiation of those aspira- 
tions for predominance with which Germany was so 
full. It seems to have been his belief that he could 
lure England to sleep or that she would shrink from the 
danger of a conflict. As England had neglected to 
strike when she could do so with ease, he believed that 
she would be willing to subordinate herself to German 
ambitions. The truth rather is that England was never 
for a moment blinded; the nation as a whole saw and 
judged truly the trouble that was coming; yet with full 
deliberation she refused to have recourse to a pre- 
ventive war. The passages which he and other German 
writers quote from speeches and newspapers are really 
evidence, not that England was meditating an attack, 
but that the possibility of an attack had been recognised, 
had been considered, and was in fact rejected; but this 
did not mean that she was ignorant of what was going 
on; it only meant that she was collecting her resources 
for defending herself and her allies if at any time the 
anticipated attack came. 

It is incomprehensible that he did not see that the 
mere existence of the German war fleet was a permanent 
menace, not to any secondary interests of England, but 
to the very foundation of her national existence. May 
we not rather take it that the view that he professes to 
take was, in the first edition, assumed rather with the 
view of hiding the real truth from England, and that it 
was meant to remind the Germans that the time was not 
yet come to disclose the full meaning of the challenge 
to England. 

In fact, the Germans took every step to warn her. 

xxi 



Foreword 

The policy which he would have pursued, not perhaps 
a very honourable one, required above all things a dis- 
creet silence. This was the last thing of which 
Germany was capable. Side by side with his confes- 
sion that the full development of his naval schemes 
required that no unnecessary offence should be given to 
England until Germany was ready, we must read the 
candid avowal of Count Reventlow that the great mis- 
take made by the Germans was to talk too much of 
all that they might do in the Near East before the 
time came to do it. 

" It had an unfavourable effect and created difficulties, 
that in Germany itself the object and the importance of 
the Bagdad railroad was proclaimed to the world to some 
extent in an incorrect and in a very exaggerated manner. 
As early as the beginning of the new century people 
talked openly with a triumph which far anticipated 
events, of the railw^ay which would threaten India and 
render possible a Turkish invasion of Egypt. A Ger- 
man war station would arise on the Persian Gulf and 
the superfluous German population would be settled in 
Mesopotamia. In this direction there were at that time 
made among us great mistakes which were quite un- 
necessary. The more quietly the Bagdad Railway "was 
huilt, the better. The baseless talk of German settle- 
ments in Mesopotamia and even in Asia Minor tended, 
moreover, to sow among the Turks a distrust of German 
intentions, which was, in fact, quite unjustified. On 
the other hand, it was certainly right that it would be 
possible, after the net of railways had been completed, 
to make of Turkey a dangerous menace against Egypt 
and India, but that sort of thing ought not to have been 

xxii 



Foreword 

said so long as Great Britain still was in a position to 
hinder and to delay the building of the railway,"^ 

Prince Biilow again and again prides himself on his 
success in building the fleet, and implies that by that 
he has added greatly to the strength of Germany. Let 
us consider these things purely as a balance-sheet of 
loss and gain according to the undiluted principles of 
" Macht-Politik." Let us make a profit and loss account. 
On the one side we have a great asset, the German fleet ; 
no one will deny the energy with w-hich its creation was 
carried out, or the courage and skill of the men by whom 
it was manned; it would be foolish to ignore the great 
incentive to vigorous action which the possession of a 
fleet spread throughout the German nation. But what 
have we on the other side ? How does the debit account 
look? How did it affect the position of Germany in 
Europe ? Against the possession of the fleet, we have 
the estrangement from England, resulting as has been 
shown in the virtual alliance of England, France and 
Russia, the inevitable separation of Italy from the 
Triple Alliance, the consequent complete reliance of 
Germany upon Austria. We have therefore a Germany 
almost isolated in Europe, and one which had to a 
greater extent than is generally recognised forfeited the 
power of determining her own policy. This in peace ; 
and in war the whole energy of the British nation 
directed against Germany in every part of the globe. It 
is a great price that they have paid. If the history 
of the last fifteen years had to be played over again, 
would they choose the path which in obedience to Prince 
Biilow and the Emperor they have followed? 

* Reventlow, " Deutschlands Auswartige Politik," 3rd Edition, p. 340. 

xxiii 



Foreword 

The book is not only an account of the author's own 
actions; it is the exposition of a system of policy and 
a theory of international relations. It is a system and 
a theory which he inherited from Bismarck, and which 
Bismarck had learned from what was in fact the situa- 
tion in Europe during the days when he served his 
diplomatic apprenticeship. It is a system founded on a 
careful balancing of one State against another, the subtle 
play of hostile alliances, beneath which lies the profound 
conviction that every State is playing entirely for its 
own hand, that there can be no confidence in the honour 
or honesty of either friend or foe, a system under which 
a State has to be as much on its guard against deception 
by professed friends as opposition by open enemies. 
There is a German phrase very characteristic of this 
attitude of mind, which more than once recurs in the 
book. Speaking of the prospects of an alliance with 
England, Prince BUlow explains that he was on his 
guard against being made a "cat's-paw," or as the 
German has it, being used **die Kastanien aus dem 
Feuer zu pflucken." The assumption is that in any 
alliance which was made England would only be 
anxious to use her ally for her own purposes, and 
then cast her aside when the needs of the moment 
were over and her usefulness had been fulfilled. We 
are justified in assuming that this is the attitude which 
he himself also would have considered natural to take 
towards any ally of Germany, for men judge others by 
themselves. 

From this system one thing was completely absent — 
the conception of loyal and permanent co-operation 
between the European States. It is noticeable that he 

xxiv 



Foreword 

does not think it worth while to devote even a passing 
word to such matters as the Hague Conference, pro- 
posals for disarmament, suggestions for arbitration. 
We know that, in fact, it was the continued opposition 
of Germany at a time when Prince Biilow was Chan- 
cellor which was responsible for the failure of many 
of the suggestions made at the Hague Conference for 
ameliorating the relations of States to one another, and 
we know also with what persistence he, as well as his 
successors, combated the proposals for any agreement 
as to armaments. In truth, all con 'options of this 
kind are completely foreign to the principles of policy 
as most of his school regard them ; but may we not also 
say. that this is evidence of his complete failure to under- 
stand the newer impulses which were arising in Europe ? 

It is easy enough to ridicule the suggestions which 
have been made during recent years for replacing the 
constant rivalry between States by a more permanent 
system of co-operation. Many of them have shown all 
the faults of the amateur and the idealist, but no one 
who was not blind to the deeper meaning of the times 
in which he lived could doubt that these proposals were 
the premonitory symptoms which under favourable 
circumstances might lead, and, in fact, were leading, 
to a fundamental alteration in the whole scheme of 
international relations. This was seen by the statesmen 
of every country in Europe, except by those of Germany. 
Germany alone resolutely turned her face to the past, 
and this at a time when Prince Billow was the chief 
director of her policy. 

It was, indeed, his deliberate determination and 
desire, and he has devoted the whole book to explain- 

XXV 



Foreword 

ing and justifying this, that the world position 
of Germany should be built up and maintained purely 
by her naval power, just as her Continental position 
had been built up and maintained by the army. But 
was this necessary ? Surely there had been sufficient 
experience during the twenty years preceding his term 
of office to show that Germany was strong enough to 
attain all that she professed to desire without resort to 
arms or to threat of arms. To what does Germany owe 
the position which she had attained in the partition of 
Africa? Surely it is the adoption of the principle that 
the partition of Africa should be arranged by peaceful 
bargaining between the nations, and that the govern- 
ment of that continent should be determined by the rules 
laid down in association by the concert of Europe as the 
representative of the civilised States of the world. There 
had been, as he himself acknowledges, no threat to 
German power beyond the seas, coming whether from 
England or any other country. No greater mistake 
could be made than to suppose that a great war fleet 
was necessary to protect German commerce and foreign 
positions. For this purpose Germany's position on the 
Continent of Europe was sufficient. 

That lesson has been learned now. It is not on 
battles to be fought in the North Sea or the 
Atlantic that the recovery of the German Colonies 
depends ; it is on the fighting in Poland, in 
France, and in Flanders. A nation as strong as 
Germany can always, when necessary, attain her 
will in these distant and less essential objects, by 
the general pressure which her wealth and her power 
enables her to use. Bismarck saw this; nations in 

xxvi 



Foreword 

modern times are so closely interdependent upon one 
another that the strong, constant and deliberate opposi- 
tion of any one can always place any other in a position 
of serious embarrassment. If there were opposition at 
any time to the extension of German influence in Africa, 
Bismarck was always able to overcome it by the 
methods he so well knew how to use, whether by some 
closer co-operation with Russia, some unforeseen 
obstacle thrown in the w^ay of the British occupation in 
Egypt, some encouragement to France to embark on 
schemes of extension inconvenient to England. This 
is how a master of diplomacy acted. He got the 
greatest results with the smallest effort. Billow's prin- 
ciple seems to have been to use the greatest effort and to 
obtain no results; but then, at least, if not for him we 
may say for the Emperor and the people, the effort, the 
noise, the commotion, was in itself an object to be de- 
sired. They w^ere all apt to mistake the noise for the 
reality, and they w^ere happy that the voice of Germany 
should be heard, even though the unnecessary 
vehemence of their language interfered with the object 
which they professed to desiderate. 

The book throws little light on the immediate origins 
of the war. As I have pointed out elsewhere,^ what 
Prince Biilow says is sufficient to dissociate him com- 
pletely from the views now proclaimed by the German 
Government and current among the German people. 
From him we have nothing to support the conception of 
a war forced upon Germany by a deliberate conspiracy 
among jealous enemies. In particular there is not a 
word to suggest that the war was the result of English 

* The Nineteenth Century and After, August, 1916. 

xxvii 



Foreword 

intrigues and machinations. The picture we have of 
England here is rather of a nation which had lost 
the opportunity which was offered to her of attacking 
Germany at a time when the fleet was still so weak 
as to make an attack dangerous. In words which wifl 
not quickly be forgotten, he again and again intimates 
that the right policy for England would, in fact, have 
been at an earlier period to have crippled Germany 
before the navy had been completed. In September, 
19 14, he says in a paragraph which has been added 
to the later editions of his book, "A Berlin paper wrote 
that England wished to make us small before we had 
got too big, but had allowed the right moment to pass," 
and again, "When in the winter 1909 a speaker in 
the English Parliament laid stress on the fact that Eng- 
land would not have to push on her naval preparations 
with such feverish activity if it had prevented the rise 
of the German naval power ten years before, he gave 
expression to an idea which was correct from the point 
of view of a policy of power." 

But if England had missed the opportunity in the 
past, he does not suggest that she was anxious to make 
another similar opportunity. He speaks of England 
having entered upon the war only when it was clear 
that there was no longer any prospect of peace, and of 
having checked the chauvinistic desires of France. It was 
not, then, England who was responsible for the war, nor 
does he suggest that it was France or Russia. If we 
are to penetrate his deeper thought, we should prob- 
ably find that he attributed it to the blunder of the men 
who sat in the place which he himself had once filled. 
We have more than one serious warning against the 

xxviii 



Foreword 

dangers which mistaken views of foreign policy and 
tactless diplomacy may bring upon a country. Are 
we not to interpret this as veiled criticisms of German 
statesmanship ? It is surely from no mere oversight 
that his successor is not once even named; that there 
comes from Prince Biilow no single expression of 
approval of his actions or of support and sympathy 
for him in the manifold difficulties by which he is sur- 
rounded, and it may also be noted that such references 
as we find to the Emperor, while appreciative of the 
work which he does to maintain the national spirit of 
the people, are quite silent as to his wisdom in the 
subtler matters of statesmanship. 

The suggestions which the book contains for terms 
of peace, slight as they are, show that when this new 
edition was published he was still under the illusion 
of the prospect of a German victory which would enable 
Germany to dictate her terms to the Allies. They are 
useful as showing what, in the opinion of one of the 
most moderate and conciliatory of men, a German 
victory would mean — an extension of German terri- 
tory on the West, which would be the foundation for a 
further development of German sea power in rivalry 
to England; the rectification of the French frontier, 
which would confirm the strategical superiority which 
Germany had secured by the annexation of Metz; and 
on the East (and this is the most interesting and 
original of his points) a great diminution of Russian 
territory, with the ultimate object of transferring the 
whole of South- Western Russia, including Odessa, to 
the German Powers, as well as the annexation to Ger- 

xxix 



Foreword 

many of the districts bordering on East Prussia. What 
would be the result of these changes? It would be 
to place Germany in a position in which, owing both 
to the actual extension of territory and the favourable 
strategical nature of the new frontiers, she would be 
free from any danger of attack, whether by a single 
State or by a coalition. In this, at least, he thinks 
like the present Chancellor, and would have Germany 
emerge from the war so strengthened as to be able 
to impose for all time her will upon Europe. 

It is not only in his conception of international rela- 
tions that the influence of Bismarck is predominant, but 
we see it also in his attitude on home affairs. No part 
of the book shows the literary ability and facility which 
are so characteristic of the author so well as the chapters 
dealing with home policy. To English readers, as well 
as to German, the analysis of the difficulties of carrying 
on a Government through a parliament, but without 
parliamentary government, is most instructive. It is 
impossible, however, not to notice a fundamental 
fallacy very characteristic of the author. With almost 
wearisome reiteration Prince Biilow speaks of the in- 
capacity both of the German people and of the 
parliamentary parties, and their failure when brought 
before practical tests. It seems to have escaped his 
observation that this, together with the want of interest 
in politics, which he deplores, is more probably to be 
attributed to the system of government than to the 
innate incapacity of the German nation. Surely the 
proper remedy for it would be to give to the nation and 
the parties a share in the responsibilities of administra- 

XXX 



Foreword 

tion. The whole system of Billow's policy was, 
however, determined by the refusal to do this, and he 
does not see that the political education of a nation can 
only proceed by throwing practical responsibility upon 
it. But because Bismarck had preferred to keep the 
full control of the whole government of the country in 
his own hands, Biilow still followed tamely in his foot- 
steps; he had not the real insight, nor had he the 
courage to recognise that the time had come for a 
further step in German political development, and that 
if the empire had been successfully founded and if it 
had passed successfully through the critical first years 
of its existence, the time had come when the people 
themselves could with safety be encouraged to take 
more share in the management of their own affairs. In 
this, just as in his foreign policy, his eyes remained 
always fixed upon the past, and he was without the 
great qualities which enable a statesman to foresee, to 
accept and to adopt those new developments, the 
necessity of which was apparent to many men of far 
less experience and ability than himself. The failure 
to guide the German nation to the powers of self- 
government goes side by side with the failure to 
accept the principle of co-operation rather than of 
enmity between the European states. 

It was not always easy to defend this system against 
the criticism of the advanced Liberals, the Centre and 
the Socialists, and in times of stress he readily had re- 
course to a weapon which Bismarck had frequently 
used with marked success, the appeal to national 
feeling. 

This was a dangerous weapon, one which, normally, 
c xxxi 



Foreword 

should be and is the last resort in a supreme crisis, but 
in modern Germany it has been erected into a per- 
manent system, and Biilow himself explains how "the 
idea of the nation may be used to move, to unite and to 
separate parties." It is noticeable that the word 
"separate" has disappeared in the last edition, for in 
truth the war has shown how ill-founded was the 
suggestion that criticism of and opposition to the 
Government was necessarily based on want of 
patriotism. But the repeated use of this weapon 
had serious results; it necessitated a constant appeal 
to national feeling, which in its turn produced an 
exaggerated and self-conscious nationalism. The 
German nation was taught to believe that it was 
surrounded by internal and external enemies, that 
they must be always on their guard. The normal 
and healthy criticism which every government in every 
nation requires was deliberately attributed to a want 
of patriotism, and it was impressed upon every in- 
dividual citizen that it was his duty constantly, on 
occasions of even minor importance, to vociferate his 
loyalty to the national idea. In every internal crisis the 
Government would make it appear that the criticism of 
the established institutions would imperil the mainten- 
ance of the naval and military forces, which were the 
only protection of the nation against its jealous enemies 
from outside. 

A strained and artificial loyalty was the result. 
This reacted again on foreign policy. The nation 
was taught to be ready to take offence, to attribute 
the normal opposition which every nation has to 
encounter, to some deep-rooted desire on the part of 

xxxii 



Foreword 

other peoples to humiliate and injure the Fatherland. 
Patriotism was not regarded as the normal subconscious 
basis of all political thought and action, but it was 
placed in the position of an emotion which must find 
constant and noisy expression. We may, in fact, say 
that the whole apparatus of national defence was used, 
not only for its proper purpose, but as a means of pre- 
venting encroachments or innovations in the forms of 
internal government, and it is to this more than any- 
thing else that we must attribute that exaggerated self- 
consciousness which has for long made Germany the 
danger spot in Europe. 

Prince Biilow while in office was subject to much 
unsympathetic criticism from this country; both what 
he did and what he said often left the impression of 
disingenuousness, and not all his ability and personal 
charm was able to create any feeling of confidence. 
A careful study of this book, while it completely 
confirms the distrust with which his attitude towards 
England was regarded, will also suggest that if he 
at times attempted to deceive others, he more often 
deceived only himself. While we may enjoy the 
wealth of illustrations with which it abounds and the 
literary skill with which he brings matters of practical 
politics into the light of great ideas, we often seem 
to miss the firm hold of reality, and much that he 
says is merely repetition in a more delicate form of the 
ideas and fallacies common in modern Germany. It 
is the book of a man who is receptive rather than 
originating, and as I read it there often comes to my 
mind the observation of one who had exceptional 
opportunities of observing him at work : " Prince 

xxxiii 



Foreword 

von Biilow is a man who speaks much and says 
little." 

The task which he set himself was one beyond his 
powers. He undertook to change the current of world 
history — on the one hand to keep back the political 
evolution of Germany at home, and on the other to use 
the vital forces of his country in order to overthrow the 
long-established predominance of England at sea. It 
was a great ambition, but it was one to which his will 
and energy w^ere unequal. He was no Chatham who 
could compel the Sovereign and his country to obedi- 
ence to himself; he was no Bismarck to make the other 
states of Europe move in conformity to his wishes. 
He aroused both at home and abroad forces which he 
was unable to control ; the national spirit which he 
had helped to create assumed shapes very dangerous 
to the success of his policy, but he was unable to 
govern the spirits which he had called up ; he forced 
the other states of Europe into a coalition very un- 
favourable to Germany, and he found himself unable 
to dissolve it ; and at the critical moment he was driven 
into obscurity by the master whom he had attempted to 
serve even against himself. 

J. W. Headlam 



London^ 

October 22nd^ igi6. 



xxxiv 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

Introduction xxxvi 

1. Germany's Struggle for World Power . i 

2. Building the German Navy . . . i6 

3. German and British Sea Power . . 27 

4. Germany : a Promoter of Peace . . 40 

5. Early Days of World Power . . .51 

6. Russia and France 72 

7. Morocco — and After ..... 92 

8. Achievements of German World Policy . 116 

9. The Beginnings of Militarism . . . 129 

10. Militarism as a Cohe'sive Force . . 144 

11. Political Deficiencies of Germany . . 158 

12. Home Policy under the New Empire . 170 

13. Dangers of Party Politics . . . 177 

14. Political Aims and Discords . . . 189 

15. Armaments and the Reichstag . . . 212 

16. Attitude of the Social Democrats . . 220 

17. Germanic Infiltration of Poland . . 237 

18. Denationalising the Pole . . . 258 

XXXV 



Contents 

CHAPTER PAGE 

19. Economic Development of Germany . . 269 

20. The Vital Importance of Agriculture . 286 

21. The Economic Future of Germany . . 299 

22. Conclusion 305 

Index . 327 



INTRODUCTION » 

When, two years ago, I penned a political introduction 
to the collective work " Deutschland unter Kaiser Wil- 
helm IL" ("Germany under the Emperor William II.")» 
the German Empire could look back upon decades of 
peaceful development, during which vigorous progress 
had been made in many fields. It seemed as though 
long years of peace still lay before us. No doubt the 
situation in world politics, and particularly in Euro- 
pean politics, had for a long time presented those 
unsolved problems to which, during my term of office, 
I had devoted much thought and labour, and which I 
touched upon in the sketch on foreign policy that I 
subsequently published. 

Many a time, owing to the accumulation of conflict- 
ing interests among rival European States, the danger 
of a violent explosion had been imminent. Both as 
regards the point at issue and the grouping of the 
Powers, the political situation abroad at the time of 
the Bosnian crisis in 1908-9 was very similar to that 
which gave rise to the present World War. On that 
occasion diplomacy succeeded in averting the impending 
danger. There seemed every reason to hope that in 
the future too the thought of the horror and havoc that 
a European war must entail would lead responsible 
statesmen to find a final and peaceful solution, even in 
the case of the gravest differences. This hope has 

* New to this edition, 
xxxvii 



Introduction 

proved to be vain. The renewed quarrel between 
Austria and Serbia, which could not be localised, be- 
came a European conflict and led to hostilities between 
the two great groups of the Powers, groups which had 
formed in the course of modern times owing to con- 
flicting interests in the spheres of European and world 
politics. 

When, two years ago, I expressed the opinion that 
of all his innate aptitudes the German's military quali- 
ties were the most admirable, I little thought that it 
would fall to my lot to behold the German people in 
their old-time splendour of battle and victory. In each 
of the three great wars of the last century the Prussians 
and the Germans appeared before the world as a nation 
of heroes. But the deeds wrought in those days, the 
strategy and tactics when, in accordance with the 
weapons of those times, it was possible to achieve de- 
cisive results in a few great battles, pale into insignifi- 
cance beside the marvellous contempt of death and the 
iron resolution that the German nation in arms displays 
in the present. 

In this terrible war our Emperor has placed himself 
at the head of the nation with that devotion to duty and 
that fearlessness which are the traditional heritage of the 
Hohenzollerns ; his personality has, in the course of the 
war, impressed itself more and more deeply upon the 
consciousness of the people, and the monarchic prin- 
ciple is consequently more firmly rooted in their hearts. 
From the incomparable corps of German officers in this 
war too, men of high talent have emerged who can 
lead the army to victory. With gratitude and admira- 
tion the whole of Germany bows down before that 

xxxviii 



Introduction 

great and unassuming general, Hindenburg, the con- 
queror of the giant armies of Russia. Nevertheless, 
what is, and always will be, the sublimest manifestation 
of these times is the heroism of the common German 
soldier who, torn from peaceful occupations, from wife 
and children, month after month loyally pursues his 
hard and bloody task for the good of his fatherland; 
no matter whether he has to face for days the devas- 
tating fire of the French guns, whether he has to charge 
the enemy's lines under a hail of bullets, or to fight 
hand to hand with bayonet, butt and bomb. 

When from this unequal struggle, in which no single 
enemy has refrained from attack, Germany at last 
emerges victorious and with augmented strength, our 
chiefest thanks will be due to those brave men, each 
one of whom, irrespective of class and education, was 
animated by the resolve to die rather than to yield. 
There is undoubted justification for the suggestion that 
is said to have been made, that the only fitting memorial 
of victory in this war must be a figure representing a 
simple German rifleman. 

No war in the past history of Germany has called 
forth anything like such universal heroism, nor did 
any past war ever entail such terrible sacrifices : 
economic sacrifices, more, much more grievous sacrifices 
of cherished human lives, sacrifices, too, of connections, 
possibilities and values. It goes without saying that 
the main object of the war must be to obtain for Ger- 
many not only adequate compensation, but also guaran- 
tees which prevent any future war under the same, or 
similar, unfavourable conditions. 

As in Germany, so also in France and in England, 

xxxix 



Introduction 

and to a certain extent even in Russia, as well as in 
Italy, this World War has thrust party differences at 
home into the background and has called forth a 
unanimity which we call Burgjneden and the French 
name sentimentally Vunion sacree. 

The reverse side of this inner harmony is that this 
war, which all the nations involved wage with passionate 
zeal, will, as far as human knowledge can foretell, be- 
queath a legacy of violently intensified animosity. For 
many a day hatred and the desire for revenge will 
influence international relations. It would be a grave 
and irreparable blunder to pursue illusions in this re- 
spect and to attempt to preserve sympathies, however 
well Justified their past existence may have been, at a 
time at which the war is the paramount and sole deter- 
mining factor. All wars, and especially one such as 
this, must of necessity interrupt the development of 
relations between the belligerent nations for a long time 
to come. The healing influence of time is needed, 
and skilled and vigorous diplomacy as well, before 
normal relations, based on mutual confidence, can be 
resumed, even in cases where palpable community of 
interests with the enemy exists. Moral victories will 
be difficult of achievement among the ruins which this 
war will leave in its wake. 

At the present time the events of 1866 are often in- 
stanced, and the development of friendship and the 
alliance between Germany and Austria which came about 
a short time later ; but there is no shadow of justification 
for assuming that anything similar could occur in the 
case of a single one of our enemies. With none of them 
are we united by links forged by the past history of a 

xl 



Introduction 

thousand years, during which we formed one nation ; 
with none of them do we share the common heritage of 
German language, culture, literature, art and customs. 
These are powerful factors that cannot be replaced by 
a few similar interests and sympathetic understanding 
extended to an alien civilisation. 

We must also not forget the fact that in 1866 Schles- 
wig-Holstein, Hanover, the Province of Hesse, Nassau 
and Frankfurt-on-the-Main were incorporated in Prus- 
sia, and at the same time solid foundations were laid 
for the bridge over the Main. In 187 1 we won Alsace, 
Lorraine, Strasburg and Metz. Nor is there any 
analogy with the Seven Years' War which was waged at 
a time when the preliminary conditions, international 
relations, political circumstances, methods of warfare 
and prospects all differed from those of the present day. 

This war is a national war, not only for us Germans, 
but equally for the English, the French and the most 
influential section of the Russian people. The 
national hatred, which has been roused by the war 
and confirmed by bloodshed, will persist after the 
struggle is concluded, until national passions receive 
an impetus in a new direction. Germany must 
realise to-day that unless quite new and, indeed, im- 
probable situations are created by this war, the feel- 
ings of bitter resentment engendered in France, England 
and Russia will persist after peace has been made. 
These considerations must be decisive in determining 
the conditions of peace, and that in two respects. Ger- 
many will in future require protection against hostility 
and desires for revenge, both old and new, in the 
West, the East and beyond the Channel; such protec- 

xli 



Introduction 

tion can only be found in the increase of her own power. 
Our enemies will also strengthen their armaments on 
land and sea. We must see to it that our frontiers and 
shores are strengthened and rendered less easy of attack 
than at the beginning of this war; not in furtherance 
of that desire for world dominion with which we are 
falsely credited, but for the maintenance of our present 
position. The outcome of the war must be a positive, 
not a negative one. To prevent our annihilation, loss 
of territory or dismemberment, to ensure that we be not 
bled to the last farthing, that is not the point; it is a 
question of definite gain in the form of real security and 
guarantees, as an indemnity for hitherto unheard-of 
labours and suffering, and also as a pledge for the 
future. In view of the ill-feeling against us which this 
war is bound to bring in its train, the mere restoration 
of the status quo ante helium would mean for Germany 
not gain, but loss. Only if our power, political, 
economic and military, emerges from this war so 
strengthened that it considerably outweighs the feelings 
of enmity that have been aroused, shall we be able to 
assert with a clear conscience that our position in the 
world has been bettered by the war. 

On the other hand, it is necessary to maintain and 
restore sympathies and to strengthen connections with 
such States as have not crossed swords with Germany 
in this war, whether or no the propaganda of the 
enemy Press and of enemy agitators has succeeded 
during the war in rousing a feeling of hostility to us 
in the population of those States. In this case political 
necessity must disregard national predilections and pre- 
judices, even such as are well founded. Seeing that 

xlii 



Introduction 

Germany must, by the increase of her power, be placed 
in a position to support old enmities which have been 
infinitely intensified and exacerbated by this war, it 
would be unwise not to attach importance to the friend- 
ship of those who did not join the ranks of her enemies 
in the course of the war. It will be a matter not only of 
resolute will, but also of diplomatic skill to attain the 
one goal without endangering the other. 

In expectation of further peaceful development, 
during which time must needs work for the Germans, I 
deemed it desirable two years ago to speak of foreign 
affairs with great reserve. I made a point of refraining 
from any decisive utterance, and to the best of my 
ability I kept my personal opinions in the background. 
It goes without saying that at the present time I can be 
more explicit on this subject. However, I may add that 
in the field of foreign politics I see no reason to modify 
anything fundamental in my conception of the attitude 
of other States toward the German Empire. In all essen- 
tials events have corroborated what I said. 

The irreconcilability of France has been only too 
clearly manifested. If in 1913 I earned the reproach in 
some quarters that there was a note of grey monotony 
in my sketch of our relations with England, to-day it 
must be conceded that the only thing in my account 
that has not been confirmed by new facts was the hope 
that Anglo-German relations would continue to develop 
peacefully along lines of mutual trust. At that 
date there was good foundation for a favourable 
forecast regarding the relations between Germany 
and Russia, for but a few years previously they had 
come safely through the test of the Bosnian crisis. On 

xliii 



Introduction 

the other hand, a certain coolness which had existed 
between the two States since 1878, and which was 
emphasised by the conclusion of the Dual Alliance in 
1890, continued to prevail. Meanwhile, in the East 
many new points of difference had arisen between 
Austria-Hungary and Russia, as a result of the two 
Balkan wars : the war between Turkey and the Bul- 
garians, Serbians and Greeks, and the subsequent war 
between these Balkan peoples. 

From the time when the Dual Alliance was formed, 
when the Empire of the Tsar joined the group of Powers 
hostile to us — that is to say for the space of a quarter 
of a century — Russo-German relations have always been 
dependent on the manner in which the recurring dif- 
ferences and conflicting interests of Austria-Hungary 
and Russia were handled; moreover, this applies not 
only to the points at issue, but also to the personality 
of those who carried on the negotiations. The danger 
that in the event of a European war we might find Russia 
on the side of our opponents has existed for many years ; 
indeed, ever since the foundation of the Empire. It 
was clear-sighted recognition of this peril which led 
Bismarck to conclude the Reinsurance Treaty. As I 
say, I believe that, on the whole, I am entitled to uphold 
my account of foreign politics in spite of and because 
of the war. 

The enemies of the German people speak and write 
with such lack of understanding of our "militarism," 
which is the foundation of our State and the guarantee 
of our future, that I have been moved to discuss shortly 
the historical and political importance of the army in 
Germany. 

xliv 



Introduction 

In the treatment of home politics I have gladly 
availed myself of the occasion to omit certain passages 
which dealt with old quarrels and differences. I also 
welcome the opportunity of expressing my appreciation 
of the new state of affairs which Social Democracy 
created by falling into line at the outbreak of war. It 
was on points of national policy in particular, and almost 
exclusively on diose points, that I joined issue with 
Social Democracy. Apart from these, in many practical 
matters the reasonable desires of Social Democracy have 
met with understanding and fulfilment on the part of 
German Governments, though Social Democracy may 
not have always recognised this fact. In the future 
mutual understanding between Social Democracy and 
the Government, and between Social Democracy and 
the other parties, will be easier of achievement and of 
more frequent occurrence than in the past, since the 
painful division of Germans into national and non- 
national parties has been done away with in this war. 
Even Social Democracy yielded to the national idea at 
the outbreak of the war. 

In publishing this separate edition, when so long a 
time has elapsed since the editions in foreign languages 
appeared, I comply with the wishes of many German 
friends. 

FtjRST VON BDlow 

Berlin^ 

May i6th^ igi6. 



IMPERIAL GERMANY 

CHAPTER I 
Germany's struggle for world power 

" In spite of the length of their history, the 
German people is the youngest of the great nations 
of Western Europe. A period of youth has twice 
fallen to their lot, and with it the struggle to 
establish their power as a State, and to gain freedom 
for civilisation. A thousand years ago they founded 
the proudest kingdom of the Germans ; eight 
hundred years later they had to build up their State 
anew on quite different foundations, and it is only 
in our times that, as a united people, they entered 
the ranks of the nations." 

These words, with which Treitschke begins his 
"German History," not only show deep historical 
knowledge, but also have a very modern political signifi- 
cance. Germany is the youngest of the Great Powers 
of Europe, the homo novus who, having sprung up very 
recently, has forced his way by his own superior 
capacity into the circle of the older nations. The new 
Great Power was looked upon as an uninvited and un- 
welcome intruder, when, after three glorious and suc- 
cessful campaigns, it entered the company of the Great 
Powers of Europe a formidable figure and demanded its 

B I 



Imperial Germany 

share of the treasures of the world. For centuries Europe 
had not believed in the possibility of the national unifica- 
tion of the individual German territories as one State. 
At any rate the European Powers had done their best 
to prevent this. In particular the policy of France, 
from the time of Richelieu to that of Napoleon III., was 
directed towards maintaining and intensifying the dis- 
ruption of Germany, as it was rightly recognised that 
the ascendancy of France, la preponderance legitime de 
la France, depended primarily on this state of affairs. 
Nor did the other Powers desire the unification of Ger- 
many. On this point the Emperor Nicholas and Lord 
Palmerston, as well as Metternich and Thiers, were at 
one. Nothing could show more clearly the marvellous 
way in which the mature wisdom of our old Emperor 
co-operated with the genius of Prince Bismarck than 
the fact that they effected the unification of Germany, 
not only in the face of all the difficulties with which 
they were confronted at home — long cherished rivalries 
and hatreds, all the sins of our past, and all the pecu- 
liarities of our political character, but also in spite of 
all opposition, avowed or secret, and of the displeasure 
of the whole of Europe. 

Suddenly the German Empire was in existence. 
More quickly even than had been feared, far stronger 
than anyone had guessed. None of the other Great 
Powers had desired the regeneration of Germany; 
each of them, when it actually took place, would have 
liked to prevent it. Small wonder that the new Great 
Power was not made welcome, but was looked upon 
as a nuisance. Even a very reserved and pacific policy 
could effect but little change in this first verdict. This 

2 



Hurled from Dizzy Heights 

union of the States of the Mid-European continent, so 
long prevented, so often feared, and at last accom- 
plished by the force of German arms and incomparable 
statesmanship, seemed to imply something of the nature 
of a threat, or at any rate to be a disturbing factor. 

In the middle of the 'nineties, in Rome, where I was 
Ambassador at that time, my English colleague, Sir 
Clare Ford, said to me: ''How much pleasanter and 
easier it was in the world of politics when England, 
France and Russia constituted the areopagus of Europe, 
and at most Austria had to be occasionally consulted." 
Those good old days are past. More than forty years 
ago the council of Europe had to admit another member 
entitled to vote, one that had not only the wish to 
express its opinion, but also the power to act ; [a power 
which our enemies in the world war have been made 
to feel even more fearfully than they had feared], 

A strenuous task in the history of the world 
had reached completion in the masterpiece of Prince 
Bismarck. The unflinching purpose of the Hohen- 
zollern dynasty for centuries required the patient 
heroism of the Prussian army and the resolute devo- 
tion of the Prussian people, until, after many changes 
of fortune, the Mark of Brandenburg rose to the rank 
of a Great Power, as the kingdom of Prussia. Twice 
the prize seemed to slip from the grasp of the Prussian 
State. The crushing defeat of 1806 hurled Prussia 
down from the dizzy heights, which had filled her con- 
temporaries with admiration and fear, and which she 
had attained under the rule of the great Frederick. 
Those people seemed to be right who had always con- 
sidered the proud State of the great King to be 

3 



Imperial Germany 

nothing more than an artificial political structure, 
that would stand and fall with the unique political 
and military genius of its monarch. Its rise, after 
the overwhelming disasters of Jena and Tilsit, proved 
to an astonished world what innate and indestructible 
strength this State possessed. Such self-sacrifice and 
such heroism on the part of a whole people presuppose 
long-established national self-confidence. And as the 
people of Prussia did not rise in lawless rebellion like 
the much-admired Spaniards and the honest Tyrolese 
peasants, but placed themselves one and all, unques- 
tioningly, at the orders of the King and his advisers, 
it appeared, to everyone*s surprise, that amongst the 
Prussians consciousness as a nation and as a State 
were one and the same thing; and that the people 
had been transformed into a nation under the strict 
discipline of Frederick's rule. The reorganisation of 
the State under the guidance of men of creative power 
during the years 1807 to 1813 won for the Government 
not only the obedience of its subjects but also their 
affection. In the war of liberation from 1813 to 1815 
Prussia gained the respect of all, and the confidence of 
many of the non-Prussian Germans. 

It was a rich inheritance that the great period of 
upheaval and liberation left behind. But owing 
to the reaction of a feeble and inglorious foreign 
policy, and to a home administration which never 
knew when to be open-handed and when to refuse, 
this inheritance was to a large extent squandered 
in the course of the following decades. Towards 
the end of the 'fifties in the nineteenth cen- 
tury, both as regards the dignity of her attitude at 

4 



New Forces 

home and her prestige abroad, Prussia was vastly 
inferior to Prussia as she had emerged from the Wars 
of Liberation. True, the national movement in favour 
of unity had been placed on a solid foundation by the 
Prussian tariff policy, but the conference of Olmiitz 
shattered the hopes of the German patriots who looked 
to Prussia for the fulfilment of their wishes as a nation. 
Prussia seemed to renounce her mission in world 
history and to relinquish the continuation in the sphere 
of political power, of the work of unification — that she 
had deliberately begun on the economic side. 

Many new forces had certainly been put at the dis- 
posal of national life by the reorganisation of the 
State on constitutional lines. This State would 
have gained immensely, both in internal vitality 
and in national striking power, if at the right time 
this loyal people had been summoned to take part 
in politics, as Stein and Hardenberg, Bliicher and 
Gneisenau, Wilhelm von Humboldt and Boyen, and 
also Yorck and Biilow-Dennewitz had wished. [In 1822 
Yorck wrote : "Nothing is more foolish than to struggle 
helplessly against the elements; success can only be 
achieved by guiding the stream into a suitable channel.'* 
Thus spoke Yorck, the stern old man.] When the great 
step of forming a constitutional National assembly 
was taken, thirty-three years too late, the want of 
confidence between the people and the authorities was 
too deeply rooted, the credit of the government had been 
too much damaged in the course of the revolutionary 
rising, for the modern forms of government to bring 
about an immediate improvement. The course of 
Prussian policy was hampered at home by suspicious 

5 



Imperial Germany 

and doctrinaire representatives of the people, while it 
was checked abroad by the hitherto invincible opposi- 
tion of Austria with her claims to ascendancy. Then, 
summoned at the critical moment by King William, 
almost at the eleventh hour, Bismarck took the tiller of 
the drifting Prussian ship of state. 

The clear-sighted patriots of those times were well 
aware of the fact that in the normal course of histori- 
cal development the union of German States under 
Prussian leadership must come to pass, and that it was 
the noblest aim of Prussian statesmanship to hasten 
and to bring about its consummation. But every road 
by which an attempt had been made to reach this end 
had proved impassable. As time went on, less and less 
seemed to be expected from the initiative of the Prussian 
Government. All the well-meant but unpractical efforts 
to induce the German people to take into its own hands 
the determination of its fate failed through the want of 
impetus from the various Governments — an impetus 
which is more decisive in Germany probably than in 
any other country. 

In "Wilhelm Meister," when the melancholy 
Aurelia finds fault in many ways with the Germans, 
Lothario, a man of experience, replies that there is no 
better nation than the Germans, so long as they are 
rightly guided. The German, of whatever stock he be, 
has always accomplished his greatest works under 
strong, steady and firm guidance, and has seldom done 
well without such guidance, or in opposition to the 
Government and rulers. Bismarck himself has told us 
in his"Gedanken und Erinnerungen" ("Reflections and 
Reminiscences") that he was from the first quite clear 

6 



Bismarck's Realisation 

on this point. With the intuition of genius he found 
the way in which the hopes of the people and the 
interests of the German Governments might be recon- 
ciled. Probably no other statesman ever had so deep 
a knowledge of the history of the nation he was called 
upon to guide. Behind the external sequence of events 
he sought and found the motive forces of national life. 
He, who was born in the year of Waterloo, and was 
confirmed by Schleiermacher in the Church of the 
Trinity in Berlin, never forgot the great times of the 
liberation and the rise of Prussia; at the beginning of 
his career as a moulder of the destinies of the world, the 
remembrance of these days was always with him. He 
realised that in Germany the will-power of the nation 
would not be strengthened, nor national passions roused 
by friction between the Government and the people, but 
by the clash of German pride, honour and ambitions 
against the resistance and the demands of foreign 
nations. So long as the question of German unification 
was a problem of home politics, a problem over which 
the political parties, and the Government and the people 
wrangled, it could not give birth to a mighty, com- 
pelling national movement that would sweep nations 
and princes alike along on a tide of enthusiasm. When 
he made it clear that the German question was essen- 
tially a question of European politics, when on this the 
non-German opponents of German unification began to 
move, Bismarck gave the princes the opportunity of 
putting themselves at the head of the national move- 
ment. 

Bismarck had had a glimpse, in Frankfurt, St. 
Petersburg and Paris, of the cards which the Powers 

7 



■^ 



Imperial Germany 

of Europe held. He had perceived that the unifica- 
tion of Germany would continue to be a purely 
national question only so long as it remained a vain 
wish, a fruitless hope of the Germans; and that it 
would become an international question the very 
moment it entered on the stage of realisation. A 
struggle with the opposition in Europe lay in the path 
of the solution of the great problem of German policy. 
The opposition in Germany itself could hardly be over- 
come except by such a struggle. By this means 
national policy was interwoven with international 
policy; with incomparable audacity and constructive 
statesmanship, in consummating the work of uniting 
Germany, he left out of play the political capabilities 
of the Germans, in which they have never excelled, 
while he called into action their fighting powers, which 
have always been their strongest point. 

By a happy dispensation, Bismarck found a general 
such as Moltke and a military organiser such as Roon 
to support him. The military achievements which 
had enabled us to regain our position as a Great Power 
in Europe also assured that position. They long dis- 
couraged any attempt of the Great Powers to deprive us 
of our right to a voice in the councils of Europe, a 
right which we had won in three victorious campaigns, 
and which has since then, for nearly half a century, 
never been seriously disputed, although it was un- 
willingly granted. With the single exception of 
France, every one, in all probability, would have gradu- 
ally become reconciled to Germany's political power if 
her development had ceased with the founding of the 
Empire. But the political unification was not the end 

8 



William II. Leads the Way 

of our history but the beginning of a new era. In 
the front rank of the Powers, Germany once more 
participated in full in the life of Europe. For a 
long time, however, the life of Europe had formed only 
a part of the life of all the nations of the world. 

[Foreign] politics had become more and more con- 
cerned with the world at large. The path of world 
politics lay open to Germany too, when she had won 
a powerful position on a level with the older Great 
Powers. The question was whether we should tread 
that new path [risk the "grand game," as Disraeli used 
to call world politics], or whether we should hesitate 
to undertake further hazardous enterprises for fear of 
compromising our newly acquired power. 

In the Emperor William II. the nation found a clear- 
sighted, strong-willed guide, who led them along the 
new road. With him we trod the path of world 
politics; but not as conquerors, not amid adventures 
and quarrels. We advanced slowly, and our rate of 
progress was regulated, not by the impatience of ambi- 
tion, but by the interests we had to promote and the 
rights we had to assert. We did not plunge into world 
politics, we grew, so to speak, into our task in that 
sphere, and we did not exchange the old European 
policy of Prussia and Germany for the new world 
policy; as is clearly shown by the course of the great 
war both on the economic and the military side, our 
strength to-day is rooted, as it has been since time 
immemorial, in the ancient soil of Europe. 

"It is the task of our generation to maintain our 
position on the Continent, which is the basis of our 
position in the world, and at the same time to foster 

9 



Imperial Germany 

our interests overseas and pursue a prudent, sensible 
and wisely restricted world policy, in such a way that 
the safety of the German people may not be en- 
dangered, and that the future of the nation may not be 
imperilled." With these words I attempted on Novem- 
ber 14, 1906, towards the close of a detailed exposition 
of the international situation, to formulate the task 
which Germany must perform at the present time, and, 
as far as man can judge, will have to perform in the 
future : a world policy based on the solidly laid founda- 
tion of our position as one of the Great Powers of 
Europe. 

At first voices were raised in protest when we trod 
the new paths of world politics, for it was considered a 
mistake to depart from the approved ways of Bis- 
marck's Continental policy. The fact was overlooked 
that it was Bismarck himself who pointed out the new 
way to us by bringing our old policy to a close. His 
work, in fact, gave us access to world politics. Only 
when Germany had attained political strength was the 
development of German commerce and industry to a 
world position possible. It was not till the Empire had 
secured its old position in Europe that it could think of 
defending the interests which German enterprise, 
German industry and commercial foresight had created 
in all quarters of the globe. It is certain that Bismarck 
did not foresee the course of this new development 
of Germany, nor the details of the problems of this 
new epoch ; and it was not possible for him to do so. 

Amongst the rich and abundant treasures of 
political wisdom that Prince Bismarck bequeathed to 
us there are no universally applicable maxims, such as 

10 



Years of Gigantic Achievement 

he formulated for a large number of eventualities in our 
national life, that we can make use of in the problems 
of our world policy. We seek in vain in the con- 
clusions of his practical policy for a justification of the 
steps which our world tasks exact from us. How- 
ever, Bismarck also paved the way for these new and 
different times. We must never forget that without the 
gigantic achievements of Prince Bismarck, who with a 
mighty effort retrieved in the space of years what had 
been mismanaged and neglected for centuries, this new 
era would never have dawned. [" C'est la diplomatie de 
Bismarck qui a fait du vrai les victoires allemandes de 
1866 et de 1870 " ^ : thus wrote Victor Berard in the Revue 
des deux Mondes a few weeks after the outbreak of the 
world war.] But though every new epoch of historical 
development is dependent on its predecessor, and 
derives its motive power in a greater or less degree 
from the past, it can only bring progress in its wake 
if it abandons old methods and aims and strives to 
attain others of its own. Even if, in the course of our 
new world policy, we have departed from the purely 
European policy of the first Chancellor, yet it still re- 
mains true that the world tasks of the twentieth 
century are, properly speaking, the continuation of the 
work he completed in the field of Continental policy. 
In my speech on November 14, 1906, I pointed out that 
Bismarck's successors must not imitate but develop 
his policy. ''If," I said at that time, "the course 
of events demands that we transcfend the limits of 
Bismarck's aims, then we must do so." 

* It is Bismarck's diplomacy which really achieved the German 
victories of 1866 and 1870, 

II 



Imperial Germany 

The course of events has long driven German 
policy out from the narrow confines of Europe into the 
wider world. It was not ambitious restlessness which 
urged us to imitate the Great Powers that had long 
ago embarked on world politics. The strength of the 
nation, rejuvenated by the political reorganisation, as 
it grew, burst the bounds of its old home, and its 
policy was dictated by the new interests and needs. In 
proportion as our national life has become world wide, 
the policy of the German Empire has become a world 
policy. 

In the year 1871 the number of inhabitants dwell- 
ing within the new German Empire was 41,058,792. 
They found work and a living in their own country, 
and, moreover, both were better and easier to get than 
before; this was due to the protection afforded by 
increased national power, the great improvement in 
the means of communication effected at the founding 
of the Empire, and the blessings of the new common 
German legislation. In the year 1900 the number 
of inhabitants had risen to 56,367,178, and to-day it 
has reached 68,000,000. The Empire could no longer 
support in the old way this immense mass of humanity 
within its boundaries. Owing to this enormous increase 
of population, German commerce and industry, and in 
consequence German policy, was confronted with a 
tremendous problem. This had to be solved, if foreign 
countries were not to profit by the superfluity of German 
life which the mother country was not able to support. 
In the year 1883 about 173,000 Germans emigrated; in 
1892 the number was 116,339; in 1898 only 22,921; 
and since then the average has remained at this last low 

12 



Economic Proportions 

figure. Thus in the year 1883 Germany afforded the 
inhabitants, who numbered 22,000,000 less than to-day, 
inferior conditions of life to those which her 68,000,000 
subjects enjoy at the present time. During the same period 
of time German foreign trade rose from 6,000 million 
marks to 22,540 million before the war. Foreign trade 
and the means of support of a nation have an obvious 
connection with each other. Clearly not so much on 
account of the actual food imported as of the greater 
opportunities for work which the industries dependent 
on foreign trade afford, although the difficulties of pro- 
viding food for the people in this war, when maritime 
trade has been cut off, plainly demonstrate how 
closely the provision market at home depends on world 
commerce. 

It was the great development of industry that 
primarily led to the solution of the problem with 
which, owing to the increase of the population, the 
nation was confronted; and this solution was reached, 
moreover, without prejudice to the older spheres of 
industry, although these suffered to some extent at 
first, on account of the surprising speed with which 
the development took place. The enormous increase 
in number and extent of the industrial enterprises, 
which to-day employ millions of workmen and officials, 
could only be attained by winning a prominent place 
for German industry in the markets of the world. If 
at the present time it was dependent on the raw 
material supplied by the Continent for its manufac- 
tures, and on the European market for the sale of its 
goods, the gigantic proportions which modern trade 
has assumed would be out of the question, and millions 

13 



Imperial Germany 

of Germans who to-day earn their living directly 
through these industries, would be out of work and 
starving. 

According to statistics, in the year 191 1 raw 
material for industrial purposes was imported to the 
amount of 5,393 million, and manufactured goods 
to the amount of 5,460 million marks were exported. 
To this must be added an export of raw material, 
chiefly mining produce, to the amount of 2,205 million. 
The imports of foodstuffs and luxuries before the war 
amounted to 3,077 million, and the exports to 1,096 
million marks. These lifeless figures assume a living 
interest when we consider how important they are for the 
welfare of the Germans, and that the work and the very 
existence of millions of our fellow citizens depend on 
them. Foreign trade handles these colossal masses of 
goods. A very small proportion of them are trans- 
ported along the railways and waterways of the Con- 
tinent; by far the greater part are carried abroad by 
the vessels of German shipowners. 

Industry, commerce and the shipping trade have 
transformed the old industrial life of Germany into one 
of world industry, and this has also carried the Empire 
in political matters beyond the limits which Prince 
Bismarck set to German statecraft. 

With her foreign trade of 22,500 millions, Germany 
was in 1913 second only to Great Britain with her 27,000 
millions, and surpassed the United States with their 
17,000 millions; she was consequently the second 
greatest commercial power in the world. In the year 
1913, 89,329 German ships and 26,637 foreign ships 
entered the German ports, while 90,456 German and 

14 



Maritime Progress 

26,919 foreign ships sailed from them. On an average 
the German shipyards built eighty new steamers and 
fifty new sailing ships a year. With rapid strides we 
Germans have won a place in the front rank of the 
seafaring nations who carry on oversea trade. 



15 



CHAPTER II 

BUILDING THE GERMAN NAVY 

The sea has become a factor of more importance 
in our national life than ever before in our history, 
even in the great days of the German Hansa. It has 
become a vital nerve which we must not allow to be 
severed, if we do not wish to be transformed from a rising 
and youthfully vigorous people into a decaying and 
ageing one. But we were exposed to this danger as 
long as our foreign commerce and our mercantile marine 
lacked national protection at sea against the superior 
navies of other powers. The task that the armed forces 
of the German Empire had to fulfil had changed con- 
siderably, since the protection on the Continent that 
our army secured us no longer sufficed to shield our 
home industries from interference, encroachment and 
attack. The army needed the support of a navy that 
we might enjoy the fruits of our national labour. 

When in the spring of 1864 the English Ambassador 
in Berlin drew the attention of the then Prussian 
President of the Council to the excitement in Eng- 
land caused by Prussia's advance against Denmark, 
and let fall the remark that if Prussia did not cease 
operations the English Government might be forced to 
take arms against her, Herr von Bismarck-Schonhausen 
replied: ''Well, what harm can you do us? At worst 
you can throw a few shells at Stolpmiinde or Pillau, 

16 



Then and Now 

and that is all." Bismarck was right at that time. 
We were then as good as unassailable to England with 
her mighty sea power, for we were invulnerable at sea. 
We possessed neither a great mercantile marine, the 
destruction of which could sensibly injure us, nor any 
oversea trade worth mentioning, the crippling of which 
we need fear. 

To-day it is different. We are now vulnerable at 
sea. We have entrusted millions to the ocean, and 
with these millions the weal and woe of many of our 
countrymen. If we had not in good time provided 
protection for these valuable and indispensable 
national possessions, we should have been exposed 
to the danger of having one day to look on defence- 
lessly while we were permanently deprived of them. 
But then we could not have returned to the comfortable 
economic and political existence of a purely inland 
State. We should rather have been placed in the 
position of being unable to employ and support a con- 
siderable number of our millions of inhabitants at 
home. [Even if by the co-operation of the military and 
administrative organisations, with the incomparable 
powers of adaptability displayed by industry, agri- 
culture and labour, it has been found possible during 
the course of a war, which keeps with the colours 
millions of Germans who would otherwise be working, 
to nullify the results of Germany's exclusion from 
international commerce and the markets of the world; 
peaceful industrial development could hardly maintain 
its progress if Germany renounced her claim to take 
part in the commerce of the world. Our economic 
life demands secufity, based on our own power, for 
c 17 



Imperial Germany 

our freedom of movement on the seas and in the 
world. This necessity indicates one of the first and 
most important aims which must be achieved by our 
successes in the war.] 

Ever since the end of the 'eighties in the nineteenth 
century the building of a fleet sufficient to defend our 
oversea interests had been a vital question for the Ger- 
man nation. It is greatly to the credit of the Emperor 
William II. that he recognised this, and devoted all 
the power of the throne and all the strength of his 
own personality to the attainment of this end. It only 
adds to his merit that he, as head of the Empire, 
championed the building of the German fleet at the 
very moment when the German people had to come 
to a decision about their future, and when, as far as 
man can tell, Germany had the last chance of forging 
the sea weapons that she needed. 

The fleet was to be built while we maintained our 
position on the Continent, without our coming into 
conflict with England, whom we could at that time not 
oppose at sea, but also while we preserved intact our 
national honour and dignity. Parliamentary opposi- 
tion, which at that time was considerable, could only 
be overcome if steady pressure were brought to bear 
on Parliament by public opinion. In view of the 
anxious and discouraged state of feeling that obtained 
in Germany during the ten years following Prince 
Bismarck's retirement, it was only possible to rouse 
public opinion by harping on the string of nationalism, 
and awakening the national consciousness. The great 
oppression which had weighed on the spirit of the 
nation since the rupture between the wearer of the 

i8 



Our Foremost Task 

Imperial crown and the mighty man who had brought 
it up from the depths of Kyffhauser, could not be 
lifted unless the German Emperor could set before his 
people, who at that time were not united either by 
common hopes or demands, a new goal towards 
which to strive, and could indicate to them "a place 
in the sun" to which they had a right, and which 
they must try to attain. On the other hand, patriotic 
feeling must not be roused to such an extent as to 
damage irreparably our relations with England,^ 
against whom our defensive power at sea would for 
years still be insufficient, and at whose mercy we lay 
in 1897, as a competent judge said at the time, like so 
much butter before the knife. To make it possible to 
build a sufficient fleet was the foremost and greatest 
task of German policy after Bismarck's retirement; a 
task with which I also was immediately confronted when, 
on June 28, 1897, ^t Kiel, on board the Hohensollern, 
I was entrusted by His Majesty the Emperor, with 
the conduct of foreign affairs, on the same day and the 
same spot on which twelve years later I handed in my 
resignation. 

On March 28, 1897, the Reichstag had passed the 
third reading of the Budget Committee's Report, which 
had made considerable reduction in the demands of 
the Government for ships to take the place of obsolete 
types, for equipment and for the construction of addi- 
tional vessels. On November 27, after Admiral Holl- 
mann, till then Secretary of State at the Imperial 
Admiralty Office, had been replaced by a man of first- 
rate capabilities, Admiral von Tirpitz, the Govern- 
ment brought out a new Navy Bill which demanded 

19 



Imperial Germany 

the construction of seven additional ships of the line, 
of two large and seven small cruisers, fixed the date 
of completion of the new constructions for the end of 
the financial year 1904, and, by limiting the period 
of service of the ships, and determining what squadrons 
were to be kept on permanent active service, ensured 
the building in due time of the ships which were to 
take the place of out-of-date vessels. The Bill runs 
as follows: "Without prejudice to the rights of the 
Reichstag, and without demanding the imposition of 
new taxes, the federated Governments have before 
them, not an unlimited naval programme; their sole 
object is to create within a definite time a national 
fleet, merely of such strength and power as to protect 
effectively the maritime interests of the Empire.** The 
Bill placed our naval policy on an entirely new footing. 
Up till then new ships had from time to time been de- 
manded and to some extent granted; but the navy had 
lacked the solid foundation that the army possessed in 
its absolutely definite constitution. By the limitation of 
the period of service of the ships on the one hand, and 
the determination of the number of effective ships on 
the other, the navy became a definite constituent part 
of our national defence. 

The building of the German fleet, like other great 
undertakings in the course of our national history, had 
to be carried out with an eye on foreign countries. 
It was only to be expected that this important 
strengthening of our national power would rouse 
uneasiness and suspicion in England. 

The policy of no State in the world is so firmly 
bound by tradition as that of England; and it is in no 

20 



British Naval Supremacy 

small degree due to the unbroken continuity of her 
Foreign policy, handed down from century to century, 
pursuing its aims on definite lines, independent of the 
changes of party government, that England has 
attained such magnificent successes in world politics. 
[The British Empire, which is three times the size of 
Europe, embraces at the present day a fifth part of the 
globe and a quarter of all mankind.] The alpha and 
omega of English policy has always been the attain- 
ment and maintenance of English naval supremacy. To 
this aim all other considerations, friendships as well as 
enmities, have always been subordinated. [For the 
attainment of this one object of English policy, English- 
men have at no time scrupled to use all the means at 
their disposal. This war proves it anew.] 

During the second half of the eighteenth and the 
first half of the nineteenth centuries England lent her 
support to Prussia, and did so, moreover, just at 
critical times in Prussian history, in the Seven Years* 
War, and in the time of Napoleon I. But the English 
attitude was hardly determined by any kindly sympathy 
with the kindred State in the north of Germany, 
struggling so manfully and laboriously to rise. To 
gain her own ends England supported the strongest 
opponent of the greatest European Power; and when 
she had attained her object, coolly left in the lurch 
Frederick the Great in his hour of need, and Prussia 
at the Congress of Vienna. While the power of France 
was being strained to the uttermost by the Seven 
Years' War, England secured her possessions in North 
America. In the great years of 1813 to 181 5 Prussia, 
with impetuous courage, finally shattered Napoleon's 

21 



Imperial Germany 

power. When at Vienna Prussia had to bargain bitterly 
for every inch of land, England had already won her 
supremacy, and, after the downfall of her French oppo- 
nent, could look upon it as assured for a considerable 
time. As the enemy of the strongest European Power, 
we were England's friend. In consequence of the 
events of 1866 and 1870, Prussia-Germany became 
the greatest Power on the Continent, and to English 
ideas, gradually took the place that France had occu- 
pied under the ^' Roi Soleil" and the two Bonapartes. 
English policy followed its traditional trend and 
opposed the Continental Power which for the timt 
being was strongest. After the downfall of the Habs- 
burg rule in Spain, Bourbon France became England's 
natural opponent, from the time of the distinguished 
part played by Marlborough in the War of the Spanish 
Succession to that of the Alliance with the victor of 
the Battle of Rossbach, which was celebrated in Lon- 
don as a triumph of British arms. After decades of 
jealous mistrust of Russia, which, under Catherine II., 
had gained enormously in power, English policy was 
turned anew wdth full vigour against France, when 
Napoleon led the armies of the Republic to victory 
over all the States of the Continent. In the struggle 
between the First Empire and England, the latter 
was victorious, no doubt owing to the unswerving and 
magnificent continuity of her policy, to the victories of 
her fleet at Aboukir and Trafalgar, and the successes 
of the Iron Duke in Spain, but also to the tenacity 
af the Russians and Austrians, and, above all, 
to the impetuosity of our old Bliicher and his 
Prussians. When, after the fall of Napoleon, the 

22 



The Balance of Power 

military ascendancy seemed to move from the west of 
Europe to the east, England made a political change 
of front. England was largely responsible for the 
result of the Crimean War, so disastrous to the 
Russians, and for the ruin of the ambitious plans of 
the proud Emperor Nicholas I.; moreover, the 
Emperor Alexander II., too, found the policy of the 
English barring his way, more especially in the Near 
East, for so long the centre of Russian ambitions and 
hopes. The English alliance with Japan owed its birth 
to considerations similar to those which led to the 
entente cordiale with France, which latter has exercised 
a decisive influence on the international politics of the 
present day. 

The interest that England takes in the balance of 
power on the Continent is, of course, not confined to 
the welfare of such Powers as feel themselves op- 
pressed or threatened by the superior strength of 
another. Such humane sympathy rarely has decisive 
influence on the political resolves of the Government 
of a great State. The direction of English policy 
depends primarily on the way in which the distribution 
of power in Europe reacts on English naval supremacy, 
and any shifting of the distribution of power, which 
is not likely to entail such a reaction, has always been 
more or less a matter of indifference to the English 
Government. If England traditionally — that is to say, 
in accordance with what she regards as her unchanging 
national interests — takes up a hostile or at least a 
suspicious attitude towards the European Power which 
for the time being is strongest, the cause must be 
sought in the importance which England attributes to 

2Z 



Imperial Germany 

a superior Continental Power with respect to over- 
seas politics. A Great Power of Europe that has 
proved its military strength in so striking a manner 
that, in the normal course of affairs, it need fear 
no attack on its frontiers, has practically developed 
the conditions of national existence by means of 
which England has become the greatest sea and 
commercial power in the world. England with 
her strength and her courage, could fare forth 
unconcernedly on the ocean, for she knew that, 
having the sea for a protection, her borders were safe 
from hostile attacks. If the borders of a Continental 
Power are similarly protected by the fear which its 
victorious and superior army inspires, it obtains the 
freedom of action in oversea affairs which England 
owes to her geographical position. It becomes a com- 
petitor in the field in which England claims supremacy. 
In this, English policy is based on historical experience 
— one might almost say on the law of the evolution 
of nations and states. 

Every nation with sound instincts and with healthy 
public institutions, has attempted to win its way to 
the sea if Nature has denied it a coast. The 
bitterest and most protracted struggles have always 
raged round coast-lines and harbours, from Corcyra 
and Potidaea, which were the cause of the Pelopon- 
nesian War, to Kavalla, about which the Greeks and 
Bulgarians quarrelled in our times. Nations which 
could not reach the sea, or were forced away from it, 
silently abandoned all claim to a place in world 
history. The possession* of the coast-line means 
neither more nor less than the opportunity to develop 

«4 



The Key of the Ocean 

oversea power, and, finally, the opportunity to transform 
Continental politics into world politics. Those European 
nations that have not made use of their coasts and 
harbours for this purpose, were unable to do so because 
they required all their forces to defend their borders 
against their opponents on the Continent. Thus the 
extensive colonial schemes of the Great Elector had to 
be abandoned by his successors. 

Access to the paths of international politics was 
always easiest for the strongest Continental Power. 
But England guarded these paths. When Louis XIV. 
proposed a Franco-English alliance to Charles II., the 
English king, who in other respects was very friendly 
to the French, replied that certain obstacles stood in 
the way of a sincere alliance, and that the most con- 
siderable of these were the efforts France was then 
making to become a formidable Sea Power. For 
England, whose only importance lay in her com- 
merce and her fleet, this would be such a cause of 
suspicion that every step which France took in that 
direction would rouse afresh the jealousy between the 
two nations. After the conclusion of the Peace of 
Hubertusburg, the elder Pitt expressed in Parlia- 
ment his regret that France had been afforded 
the opportunity to build up her fleet again. It 
was mainly as an opponent of French oversea 
policy that England took sides against France 
in the war of the Spanish Succession, a war which 
dealt France's supremacy in Europe the first 
searching blow, and in which England not only 
obtained the key of the ocean by winning Gibraltar, 
but also gained possession of the heart of Canada, for 

«5 



Imperial Germany 

which France had fought so strenuously. In the middle 
of the eighteenth century Lord Chatham said: *'The 
only danger that England need fear will arise on the 
day that sees France attain the rank of a great Sea, 
Commercial, and Colonial Power." And before the 
Crimean War David Urquhart wrote : " Our insular 
position leaves us only the choice between omnipotence 
and impotence. Britannia will either become mistress 
of the seas or will be swallowed up by them." [And in 
1905 the Belgian Minister in Berlin, Baron Greindl, 
summed up his opinion of the opposition between Eng- 
land and Germany in these words : "The true cause of 
the hatred of the English for the Germans is jealousy, 
roused by the extraordinarily rapid development of 
German industry. . . . Accustomed as they are to have 
no rivals, Englishmen look upon all competition as an 
infringement of their rights."] 



26 



CHAPTER III 

GERMAN AND BRITISH SEA POWER 

The English policy outlined at the close of the previous 
chapter has remained true to itself up to the present 
time, because England is still, as she was formerly, the 
first Sea Power. Subtler diplomatic conflicts have 
taken the place of the more violent struggles of olden 
times. The political aim remains the same. When 
Germany, after the solution of her old Con- 
tinental problems — after securing her position in 
Europe — was neither willing nor able to refrain from 
embarking on international politics, she was bound to 
inconvenience England. But even if we can under- 
stand the traditions of English policy, such under- 
standing in no wise implies the admission that Eng- 
land had any reason to contemplate the expansion of 
German national industries into world industries, of 
German Continental policy into world policy, and 
especially the construction of a German navy with the 
same mistrust that was perhaps justified in other 
centuries and in the case of other Powers. 

The course of our world policy differed completely 
in its means as well as in its ends, from the old-time 
attempts at conquering the world made by Spain, 
France, and at one time by Holland and Russia. The 
world policy against which England made such 
a determined stand in the past mostly aimed at a 

27 



Imperial Germany 

more or less violent change in the international situa- 
tion. We only keep in view the change in the condi- 
tions of our national life. The world policy of other 
countries which England often opposed was of an 
offensive nature, ours was defensive. It was both neces- 
sary and desirable for us to be so strong at sea that 
no Sea Power could attack us without grave risk. We 
had to be free to protect our oversea interests, inde- 
pendently of the influence and the choice of other Sea 
Powers. Our vigorous national development, mainly 
in the industrial sphere, forced us to cross the ocean. 
For the sake of our interests, as well as of our honour 
and dignity, we were obliged to see that we won 
for our world policy the same independence that 
we had secured for our European policy. [Our fleet had 
to be made so strong, and must in future remain so 
strong, that naval warfare with us is fraught with danger 
which will imperil the superiority of even the mightiest 
Sea Power.] The fulfilment of this national duty might 
eventually be rendered more difficult by English oppo- 
sition, but no opposition in the world could release us 
from it. 

Our fleet had to be built with an eye to English 
policy — ^and in this way it was built. My efforts in 
the field of international politics had to be directed to 
the fulfilment of this task. [When these pages first 
appeared The Times remarked that I had worked with 
all my might for the building of a German fleet and 
had made it possible to enlarge it; this is quite true, 
with the reservation that I never advocated an unlimited 
naval policy, but to the best of my ability endeavoured 
to secure the building of a fleet adequate for our defence 

j8 



Between Two Stools 

and in accordance with the expanding needs of our 
world policy.] 

For two reasons Germany had to adopt an inter- 
nationally independent position. We could not be 
guided in our decisions and acts by a policy directed 
against England, nor might we, for the sake of Eng- 
land's friendship, become dependent upon her. Both 
dangers existed, and more than once were perilously 
imminent. In our development as a Sea Power we 
could not reach our goal either as England's satellite, 
or as her antagonist. [Machiavelli said it was unwise 
to attach oneself to any one more powerful than 
oneself, as one is then at the latter's mercy. In 
a conversation with Heinrich v. Sybel at Fried- 
richsruh. Prince Bismarck said in 1893: "England 
is Germany's most dangerous opponent. She thinks 
herself invincible and does not deem Germany's 
assistance necessary. England does not yet con- 
sider us her equal, and would only conclude an 
alliance with us on terms that we could never accept. 
In any alliance that we conclude we must be the 
stronger party." As long as we were not in a position 
to defend ourselves at sea no really sincere and friendly 
relations could exist between us and the greatest Sea 
Power, unless we renounced our plan of enlarging the 
navy. We should have had to give up the further de- 
velopment not only of our battle fleet, but also of our 
mercantile marine, and thus once and for all we should 
have lost every hope of competing with England in over- 
sea trade.] England's unreserved and certain friendship 
could only have been bought at the price of those very 
international plans for the sake of which we had sought 

29 



Imperial Germany 

British friendship. Had we followed this course we 
should have made the mistake to which the Roman 
poet refers when he says that one must not "propter 
vitam vivendi perdere causas/* [To have renounced our 
naval policy in order to please England would have 
been tantamount to declaring the bankruptcy of Ger- 
many as a rising World Power.] But as England's 
enemy we should have had little prospect of reaching 
such a point in our development as a Sea and Com- 
mercial Power as we have actually attained. 

During the Boer War, which strained the forces 
of the British Empire to the uttermost, and led Eng- 
land into great difficulties, there seemed to be an oppor- 
tunity of dealing the secret opponent of our world 
policy a shrewd blow. As in the rest of Europe, enthu- 
siasm for the Boers ran high in Germany. Had the 
Government undertaken to put a spoke in England's 
wheel, it would have been sure of popular approval. 
To many it seemed that the European situation was 
favourable to a momentary success against England, 
and that French assistance was assured. But there was 
only a seeming community of interests against England 
in Europe, and any eventual political success against 
England in the Boer question would have had no real 
value for us. An attempt to proceed to action at the 
bidding of the pro-Boer feelings of that time would 
soon have had a sobering effect. Among the French the 
deeply rooted national hatred against the German 
Empire would speedily and completely have ousted the 
momentary ill-feeling against England, as soon as we 
had definitely committed ourselves to a hostile course; 
and a fundamental change of front in French policy 

30 



Germany and the Boer War 

would immediately have come within the range of 
practical politics. However painful the memory 
of the then recent events at Fashoda might be 
to French pride, it could not suffice to turn the 
scale against the memory of Sedan. The Egyptian 
Sudan and the White Nile had not driven the 
thought of Metz and Strassburg from the hearts of 
the French. There was great danger that we should 
be thrust forward against England by France, who at 
the psychological moment would refuse her aid. As 
in Schiller's beautiful poem, ''Die Ideale " ("The 
Ideals "), our companions would have vanished mid- 
way. 

But even if, by taking action in Europe, we had 
succeeded in thwarting England's South African policy, 
our immediate national interests would not have bene- 
fited thereby. From that moment onward for many 
a long day our relations with England would have been 
poisoned. England's passive resistance to the world 
policy of new Germany would have been changed 
to very active hostility. During those years we were 
occupied in founding our sea power by building the 
German navy, and even in the event of defeat in the 
South African War, it was possible for England to 
stifle our sea power in the embryo. Our neutral atti- 
tude during the Boer War had its origin in weighty 
considerations of the national interests of the German 
Empire. 

Our navy was not yet strong enough for us forcibly 
to achieve a sufficient sea power in the teeth of Eng- 
lish interests. Nor could we, by being towed in the 
wake of English policy, attain a development of Ger- 

31 



Imperial Germany 

man sea power which was so contrary to English 
wishes. 

It was an obvious suggestion that the English 
opposition which was directed against German world 
policy, and above all against the construction of a 
German navy, might be overcome most easily by an 
alliance between Germany and England. Indeed, at 
times the idea of an Anglo-German alliance has been 
discussed in the Press of both countries, especially 
about the beginning of the new century. It had 
already occupied Bismarck's thoughts, but the final 
result was only the resigned remark : " We would 
be willing enough to love the English, but they 
will not allow us to do so." German interests 
would have gained nothing by stipulations which 
England might disregard in the event of a change 
of Ministry, or the occurrence of any other circum- 
stances over which we had no control, while we 
continued bound to them. Nor would it have 
sufficed us that some Minister or other seemed dis- 
posed to an Anglo-German agreement. To make a 
lasting agreement the whole Cabinet, and above all 
the Prime Minister, would have had to support 
it. Bismarck pointed out how difficult it was to 
establish firm relations with England, because treaties 
of long duration were not in accordance with 
English traditions, and the expression of opinion of 
English politicians, even those in a prominent position, 
and the transitory moods of the English Press were 
by no means equivalent to immutable pledges. 

[From the time of the Crimean War until the out- 
break of the world war, England entered into no alliance 

32 



The Crisis of 1914 

with any Continental Power; and even on the eve of 
this war English ministers still declared that England 
must not make her position dependent on alliances 
which would fix definite obligations on her. In the 
speech in the House of Commons in which Sir Edward 
Grey, on August 4, 1914, defended England's partici- 
pation in the world war, he said that six years pre- 
viously, during the Bosnian crisis, he had told the 
Russian Minister for Foreign Affairs at that time, that 
public opinion in England would not allow the English 
Government to give Russ'ia anything more than diplo- 
matic support. **I told Mr. Iswolski definitely then, 
this being a Balkan crisis, a Balkan affair, I did not 
consider that public opinion in this country would 
justify us in promising to give anything more than 
diplomatic support. ... In this present crisis, up till 
yesterday, we have also given no promise of anything 
more than diplomatic support — up till yesterday no 
promise of more than diplomatic support." 

The speech to which I here refer, and in which 
the English Minister sounded the tocsin of war, is 
chiefly devoted to proving that up to the last Eng- 
land had kept a free hand. With such care and 
prudence did England up to the last moment pursue a 
policy, even towards France, which rendered it possible 
for her to act in accordance with the logical conse- 
quences of her hitherto friendly relations with that 
country or not, as she thought expedient under the 
circumstances. And yet France occupied a very dif- 
ferent position from ours with regard to England; for 
many reasons English public opinion was more favour- 
able to France than to us, because England had for 
D 33 



Imperial Germany 

years not looked upon France as a rival, and certainly 
not as a serious competitor at sea or in trade. 

There is no doubt room for differences of opinion 
as to whether a treaty of neutrality with England would 
have been to our advantage after the death of King 
Edward, when our fleet, though not fully developed, 
had attained dimensions which sufficed for our defence 
at that time. It is perfectly obvious that as long as our 
fleet was insufficient even for defensive purposes, and 
certainly when we had only just begun to build it and 
as long as King Edward reigned, we could not bind our- 
selves to England without the securest guarantees; and 
above all we could not be England's cat's paw in 
Russian affairs.] In consideration of the widespread 
jealousy roused in England by Germany's industrial 
progress, and especially by the increase of the German 
navy, it was only on condition of absolutely binding 
pledges on the part of England that we could have set 
foot on the bridge of an Anglo-German alliance. We 
could only thus unite ourselves with England on the 
assumption that the bridge which was to help us over 
the real and supposed differences between England and 
Germany was strong enough to bear our weight. [The 
actual attitude of the English towards us, just at the 
time when they were making advances to us, showed 
how incapable England was of restraining her jealousy 
and hatred, even when she was trying to win our favour. 
I need only recall her attitude on the occasion of the 
troubles in Samoa in 1899, and her unjustified and 
brutal seizure of German mail packets, in neutral waters 
too, in January, 1900. Treaties are of value only when 
they are founded on mutual interests and common 

34 



The New Century 

aspirations. *'Il y a quelque chose de pire que Visole- 
ment, ce sont des alliances au fond desquelles reside le 
soupgon,"^ says Pierre de la Gorce in his book on 
Napoleon III., that unhappy monarch whose foreign 
policy teaches one, better than any text-book on diplo- 
macy, how not to set about it. 

When at the beginning of the century this question 
of alliance was ventilated, the international situation was 
very different from that which obtained twelve years 
later. The latter, of course, also differed from that of 
the present day. In all politics, and especially in 
foreign politics, change is the one thing that is per- 
manent. It is the task of those who are responsible 
always to envisage their own problems anew in the 
light of changing circumstances, without losing sight 
of the old, permanent aims of their nation's history.] 

[At the beginning of the century Russia] had not 
been weakened by the Japanese War, but intended 
to secure and expand her newly-won position in the 
Far East, in particular on the Gulf of Pechili. Owing 
to the Asiatic questions pending between the two 
empires, relations between England and Russia were 
then rather strained. The danger was imminent that 
if Germany allied herself with England she would 
have to undertake the role against Russia that Japan 
assumed later single-handed. But we should have 
had to play this part under very different conditions 
from the very favourable ones which Japan found at 
her disposal in her conflict with Russia. The Japanese 
War was unpopular in Russia, and it had to be waged 

' There are worse -things than isolation, namely alliancesi Ia \vhich 
suspicion lurks. 

35 



Imperial Germany 

at an immense distance, like a colonial war. If we 
had allowed ourselves to be thrust forward against 
Russia we should have found ourselves in a far more 
difficult position. A war against Germany would not, 
in these circumstances, have been unpopular in Russia, 
and would on the part of the Russians have been 
carried on with national enthusiasm. France would 
have had the casus foederis, and would have been 
able to wage her war of revenge under favourable 
circumstances. England was on the eve of the Boer 
War. Her position would have been improved if this 
great colonial enterprise had been supported and 
accompanied by a European complication, such as 
had rendered her good service in the middle of the 
eighteenth and in the first decade of the nineteenth 
centuries. We Germans would have had to wage 
strenuous war on land in two directions, while to Eng- 
land would have fallen the easier task of crippling 
our trade, of further extending her Colonial Empire 
without much trouble, and of profiting by the mutual 
weakening of the Continental Powers. [We should 
have allowed England to impose upon us in further- 
ance of her own aims, just as to-day France is 
imposed upon and bleeds to death for England's 
sake.] Last, but certainly not least, while military 
operations were going forward on the Continent, and for 
a long time after, we should have found neither strength 
nor means nor leisure to proceed with the building 
of our navy, as we have been able to do. 

[Had we let slip this, possibly the last, propitious 
moment to forge our weapons at sea, we should have 
been forced to renounce all hope of maritime independ- 

36 



Germany's Great Opportunity 

ence for a long time to come, and with this, of an 
independent world policy. We should have risked 
our welfare for England against Russia, for naturally, 
when Chamberlain made overtures to us (which, how- 
ever, were not endorsed by the Prime Minister, Lord 
Salisbury), it would have suited England if we, as her 
henchman, had rid her of Russia, whose presence in 
Eastern Asia irked her. As things stood at that time, 
it was certainly wiser to leave English interests un- 
disturbed, so to speak, and to avoid both hostile 
encounters and docile dependence.] 

Thus, unaffected and uninfluenced by England, 
we did in fact succeed in creating that power at 
sea which was the real basis of our industrial interests 
and our world policy; a power that the strongest 
enemy would not attack without hesitation. [How 
important this was for us has been proved in the 
present war, in which our battle fleet forces the main 
strength of the British navy to remain in the North 
Sea, and thus prevents England from using her full 
strength at the Straits in which submarine warfare 
has assumed overwhelming proportions, in which our 
submarines have proved sharp, effective and mighty 
weapons and have dealt enemy trade and traffic shrewd 
blows, whereby the British mastery of the sea is for the 
first time in many centuries seriously imperilled. On 
all the seas our heroic naval officers and their brave 
crews have won undying fame for our young German 
flag. The brave men of the Emden, the Karlsruhe, 
of the Konigsberg and the Moewe, Count Spee, with 
his two sons. Otto Weddigen, and all those who ad- 
ventured and fought in U-boats, will never be forgotten 

37 



Imperial Germany 

by our people. They will continue to live in our 
hearts, like the heroes of olden times and the heroes of 
the legends, Roland, Siegfried and Arminius.] 

During the first ten years after the introduction 
of the Navy Bill of 1897, ^^^ while our shipbuilding 
was in its infancy, an English Government, ready to 
go to any lengths, could have made short work of our 
development as a Sea Power, and rendered us harm- 
less before our claws had grown at sea. [In September, 
1914, a Berlin newspaper remarked very pertinently that 
England wanted to subdue us before we grew too great, 
but had missed the right moment. We had meanwhile 
grown so strong that we could without undue fear do 
battle with England. And in the eighteenth month of 
the war the Frankfurter Zeitung wrote with equal 
justice that, when it came to actual warfare, England 
had discovered the distressing fact that in spite of all her 
plans for isolating us, she had missed the right moment 
for crushing the rival she feared. 

While our fleet was in process of construction a 
preventive war] against Germany was repeatedly de- 
manded in England. The Civil Lord of the Admiralty, 
Mr. Arthur Lee, asserted in a public speech on 
February 3, 1905, that attention should be directed to 
the North Sea, the British fleet should concentrate 
there, and in the event of war they must "strike the 
first blow, before the other side found time to read in 
the newspapers that war had been declared." The 
Daily Chronicle emphasised this utterance with the 
words : '* If the German fleet had been smashed in 
October, 1904, we should have had peace in Europe for 
sixty years. For this reason we consider the statement 

38 



Some English Opinions 

Mr. Arthur Lee uttered, assuming that it was on behalf 
of the Cabinet, a wise and pacific declaration of the 
unalterable purpose of the Mistress of the Seas." As 
early as the autumn of 1904 the Army and Navy 
Gazette remarked how intolerable it was that England, 
entirely on account of the existence of the German 
fleet, was forced to adopt measures of defence which 
she would otherwise not have needed. The article 
runs: "Once before we had to snuff out a fleet, 
which we believed might be employed against us. 
There are many people, both in England and on 
the Continent, who consider the German fleet the 
only serious menace to the preservation of peace in 
Europe. Be that as it may, we are content to point out 
that the present moment is particularly favourable to 
our demand that the German fleet shall not be further 
increased." About the same time an English review 
of good standing, in an article in which a pre- 
ventive war against Germany was openly preached, 
wrote : "If the German fleet were destroyed the 
peace of Europe would be assured for two gene- 
rations. England and France, or England and 
the United States, or all three, would guarantee the 
freedom of the sea and prevent the building of more 
ships, which, in the hands of ambitious Powers, with 
a growing population and no colonies, are dangerous 
weapons." 

Just at this time France affronted us in Morocco. 
A few months earlier, in June, 1904, a French 
publicist [and politician, who had excellent connec- 
tions in England and France, and who for his own 
part had a genuine desire to promote peace, told 

39 



Imperial Germany 

me with an expression of the greatest disquietude] that 
the construction of our fleet called forth widespread and 
increasing anxiety in England; only England could not 
make up her mind how best to put a stop to our further 
shipbuilding, whether by direct representations or by 
encouraging the Chauvinistic elements in France. [My 
French friend, who a short time previously had spoken 
to influentiaj^ persons of high standing in London, said 
to me: "You will not be able to complete your naval 
programme, for before long England will confront you 
with the alternative between ceasing your construction 
of ships, or seeing the British fleet put out to sea.'* 
Nevertheless, we did carry out our shipbuilding pro- 
gramme.] When, in the winter of 1909, an English 
Member of Parliament stated that England would not 
have needed to continue her sea armaments at such a 
feverish rate if she had ten years previously prevented 
the rise of the German Sea Power, he expressed a 
thought that, so far as the policy of mere force is con- 
cerned, was quite correct. But England would not 
have found an opportunity to nip our growing fleet in 
the bud, a thing she had repeatedly done in the past in 
the case of other countries, because we did not expose 
ourselves. 



40 



CHAPTER IV 

GERMANY : A PROMOTER OF PEACE 

The fleet that we have built since 1897, ^^^ which, 
though far inferior to England's, has made us the 
second Sea Power of the world, enabled us to support 
our interests everywhere with all the weight of our 
reputation as a Great Power. The foremost duty of 
our navy is to protect our world commerce and the lives 
and honour of our countrymen abroad. German battle- 
ships have performed this task in the West Indies and 
the Far East. 

Certainly, it was a predominantly defensive role 
that we assigned to our fleet. It is self-understood, 
however, that in serious international conflicts this 
defensive role might be extended. If the Empire should 
be wantonly attacked, from no matter what quarter, the 
sea, as a theatre of war, was bound to have a very 
different and much greater importance in our times 
than it had in 1870. In such a case the fleet as well as 
the army would, needless to say, in accordance with 
Prussian and German traditions, consider attack the 
best form of defence. But there was absolutely no 
ground for the fear which the building of our navy 
aroused, that with the rise of German power at sea the 
German love of battle might be awakened. 

Of all the nations of the world the Germans are 
the people that have most rarely set out to attack 

41 



Imperial Germany 

and conquer. If we except the expeditions against 
Rome, led by the German Emperors in the Middle 
Ages, which originated rather in a grand if mistaken 
political illusion than in love of battle and conquest, 
we shall seek in vain in our past for wars of conquest 
that may be compared with those of France in the 
seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, those 
of Spain under the Habsburgs, of Sweden in her best 
days, or those of the Russian and British Empires in 
the course of their fundamentally expansive national 
policy. For centuries we Germans have aimed at 
nothing but the defence and security of our country. 
Just as the Great King did not lead his unvanquished 
battalions on adventurous expeditions, after the con- 
quest of Silesia and the safeguarding of the independ- 
ence of the Prussian monarchy, so the Emperor 
William and Bismarck, after the unparalleled successes 
of two great wars, did not dream of attempting 
further military exploits. If any nation may boast 
of political self-restraint, it is the Germans. We have 
always set a limit to our successes ourselves, and have 
not waited till the exhaustion of our national resources 
made us halt. Consequently our evolution lacks periods 
of a brilliant and sudden rise; rather it is a slow and 
unwearied advance. The Germans have practically no 
tinge of that restlessness which in other nations urges 
men to find in success the spur to further bold effort. 
Our political character is less that of the rash, specula- 
tive merchant than that of the plodding peasant who, 
after sowing carefully, patiently awaits the harvest. 

After the Franco-German War all the world was 
filled with dread of further military enterprises on 

42 



The German Love of Peace 

the part of Germany. There was no scheme of con- 
quest, however improbable, that we were not credited 
with harbouring-. Since then more than four decades 
have passed. The strength of our people has grown, 
we are richer in material possessions, and our army- 
has become stronger and stronger. The German fleet 
has been created and developed. The number of great 
wars that have been waged since 1870 was on the whole 
rather greater than those in a similar period before. 
Germany did not seek to take part in any of them, 
and calmly resisted all attempts to be drawn into military 
entanglements. 

Without boastfulness or exaggeration, we may say 
that never in the course of history has any Power, 
possessing such superior military strength as the Ger- 
mans, served the cause of peace in an equal measure. 
This fact cannot be explained by our well-known and 
undoubted love of peace. The German has always 
been peace-loving, and has nevertheless had to draw 
his sword again and again in order to defend himself 
against foreign attacks. As a matter of fact, peace 
has primarily been preserved, not because Germany 
herself did not attack other nations, but because other 
nations feared a repulse in the event of their attacking 
Germany. From 187 1 to 1914 the strength of our 
armaments has proved to be a guarantee of peace such 
as the last tumultuous centuries never knew. An 
historical judgment is contained in this fact. 

Given a rightly guided foreign policy, the com- 
pletion of our Lines of Defence by the navy constituted 
an additional and increased guarantee of peace. Just 
as the army prevented any wanton interruption of the 

43 



Imperial Germany 

course of Germany's Continental policy, so the navy 
prevented any interruption in the development of our 
world policy. As long as we had no navy, our rapidly 
growing world economic interests, which are also 
inalienably bound up with our national economic 
interests, presented a vulnerable surface to our oppo- 
nents. By protecting this weak point, and also render- 
ing a naval attack on the Empire an undertaking of 
great risk for the enemy, we preserved not only the 
peace of our own country, but also that of Europe. 
We were concerned with the acquirement of means of 
defence, not of attack. After entering the ranks of 
the Sea Powers we continued quietly on the same 
course as heretofore. The new era of unbounded Ger- 
man world policy, which was so often foretold abroad, 
has not dawned. But we certainly had acquired the 
means of effectively protecting our interests, of resist- 
ing aggression, and of maintaining and developing our 
position everywhere, especially in Asia Minor, the Far 
East, and Africa. 

As our problems in world politics increased, the 
web of our international relations had to be extended. 
Distant oversea States, which at the time of our purely 
Continental policy concerned us but little, grew of 
more and more importance to us. It became the most 
significant duty of our foreign policy to cultivate good 
and, if possible, friendly relations with these. This 
refers primarily to the two new Great Powers of 
the West and the East, the United States of America 
and Japan. In both cases we had to overcome tem- 
porary differences before there could be any question 
of entering into friendly relations. 

44 



The Manila Incident 

During the Spanish-American War a section of Ger- 
man public opinion manifested strong sympathy with 
Spain, which was naturally resented in the States. Ger- 
man relations with America had also been clouded by the 
way in which part of the English and American Press 
had interpreted certain incidents which had occurred 
between our squadrons and the American fleet off 
Manila. This difference reached its height in February, 
1899, so that it seemed desirable strongly to advocate 
preparations for a better understanding between the 
two nations of kindred race. What I said on this point 
in the Reichstag has subsequently proved true. "From 
the point of view of a common-sense policy, there is 
no reason why the best relations should not subsist 
between Germany and America. I see no single point 
in which the German and American interests are 
opposed, nor any in the future where, in the course 
of their development, they are likely to clash." 

More than anyone else the Emperor William II. 
manifested this understanding of the United States. 
It was he who first paved the way for our friendly and 
sound relations. He won over the Americans by his 
consistently friendly and sympathetic attitude. He was 
bound to President Roosevelt by ties of personal friend- 
ship. The mission of Prince Henry to America was 
crowned with complete success. It contributed very 
largely to making both nations realise how many 
common interests united them, and how few real differ- 
ences divided them. It was a happy thought of the 
Emperor's, too, to knit the two Germanic nations 
together intellectually, by the exchange of teachers of 
repute in the German and American Universities. Ger- 

45 



Imperial Germany 

man intellect, poetry, philosophy, and science have met 
nowhere with more sincere admiration than in the 
United States. On the other hand Germany, more than 
any other country, studied and welcomed the wonderful 
technical inventions of America. This intimate ex- 
change of ideas in the field of intellectual and scientific 
achievement found its outward manifestation in the 
arrangements for exchanging professors. 

These ties between the two nations and their rulers, 
as they grew closer, promoted a friendly political rela- 
tion between us and the United States. Not only did 
we settle the question of Samoa amicably, but during 
the critical period through which our country passed at 
the beginning of the new century America never once 
opposed our policy. With the exception of Austria, 
there is probably no country where existing circum- 
stances contribute so naturally to permanent friendly 
relations with us as in North America. About 10,000,000 
Germans live in the United States. Since the forma- 
tion of the *' Deutsch-Amerikanische Nationalbund " 
(National German-American Union) in 1910, they are 
animated more and more by the desire to maintain and 
encourage a close connection with their old German 
home, while at the same time remaining perfectly loyal 
to their adopted country. 

[This attachment to our country of our compatriots 
in America has hitherto stood the test of the 
present war. None the less, on the other hand, it 
has become apparent how strong, nay, passionate, is the 
devotion to their mother country of those citizens of 
the United States who are of English extraction. One 
amongst many results of the world war has been the 

46 



American Sympathies 

quickening and strengthening of the feeling of solidarity 
among the Anglo-Saxons. Since the outbreak of the 
world war the whole English-speaking world, in so far 
as it belongs to the Anglo-Saxon race, and even beyond 
those limits, is opposed to us. Considering the numeri- 
cal superiority of the Anglo-Americans, who occupy 
nearly all government posts and public positions, it 
was unavoidable that in the event of a war between 
Germany and England, the bulk of American sympathy 
should incline to the English side, and that the official 
policy of America should follow the lead of the major 
part of public opinion. In June, 1915, the New York 
correspondent of a great Berlin newspaper wrote : ** An 
estrangement has supervened between Germany and 
America, which we shall be unable to bridge for many 
years." Germany has suffered bitterly from the biased 
and hostile attitude of public men and officials in 
America during the war. The want of consideration, 
even in outward forms, evinced towards us in 
these quarters in the course of the differences which 
arose on submarine warfare, was such as we had never 
before experienced, and is probably unique in the his- 
tory of diplomatic relations between two great countries. 
It is easy to understand the indignation now felt 
in wide circles in Germany against the American 
people who had for so long been regarded as our true 
friends. Such indignation is justified, and is by no 
means diminished by the fact that America, making the 
most of the present state of the world's markets, is on 
the eve of becoming the wealthiest country on earth. 
In the monthly report of one of the big New York 
banks, dated July, 1915, it was stated that the war 

47 



Imperial Germany 

business of the United States after less than a year of 
warfare surpassed everything that had hitherto been 
known. The report runs as follows: "America is the 
only country in the world whose bank position has 
grown steadily stronger. Gold is flowing to us from 
every quarter of the globe, the imports of the last six 
months breaking all records in our financial history." 
The report reaches its climax in the words : **The situa- 
tion is absolutely unprecedented and merits the careful 
study of every thoughtful American.** I should like to 
add : and of every thoughtful European. Such a song 
of triumph has seldom if ever been heard as that of 
the American financial secretary at the end of 1915, 
when with a pitying glance towards " Europe, decimated 
and impoverished" by the world war, he spoke with 
smug self-satisfaction of the unparalleled prosperity of 
American trade since the beginning of the war. Never- 
theless, it will be to the mutual advantage of Germany 
and America to resume normal economic relations later 
on. This will be possible if the policy of both countries 
is directed by cool-headed, steady men, and if neither 
exaggerated expressions of friendship and pointless 
subservience, nor vacillation and nervousness are in- 
dulged in should occasional differences arise. Respect 
for each other, on the basis and within the limits of self- 
respect, will be the best means of assuring friendly 
relations between the United States and ourselves.] 

Our relations with Japan, as with the United States of 
America, had passed through a period of strain towards 
the end of the nineteenth century. Up to the begin- 
ning of the 'nineties we had served as a model for the 
Japanese and had been their friend; the Japanese 

48 



The Far East in 1895 

baasted that they were the Prussians of the East. Our 
relations with them received a shock when, in 1895, we 
together with France and Russia [with whom we had 
formed ad hoc a sort of Far Eastern triple alliance] forced 
victorious Japan to reduce her demands on China. 
When we thus interfered with Japan we lost much of 
the sympathy which she had for many years accorded 
us, and we did not earn particular gratitude from France 
and Russia. A picture drawn by the German 
Emperor's scheme, which was only to have served the 
ideals of peace, was eagerly and successfully taken 
advantage of by our antagonists and competitors to 
injure us with the Japanese. By dint of prolonged 
efforts we succeeded [during the next ten years] in 
reviving a better state of feeling towards Germany in 
Japan. 

It was not to our interest to have [the Japanese 
nation] for an enemy. On the other hand, we had no 
intention, of course, of allowing Japan to use us as a 
cat's paw. It would have very considerably facilitated 
matters not only for Japan but also for England if, for 
the sake of their interests in the Far East, we had 
allowed ourselves to be thrust forward against Russia. 
We ourselves should have fared badly in the matter. 
Just as we did not welcome the idea of offending and 
estranging Japan for the sake of France and Russia, 
we did not care to fall out with Russia on account of 
the interests in the Far East of other Powers. 

Towards the end of the 'eighties Prince Bismarck 
once said to me, with reference to Russia and Asia : 
"In Russia there is a very serious amount of unrest 
and agitation, which may easily result in an explosion. 

E 49 



Imperial Germany 

It would be best for the peace of the world if the 
explosion took place in Asia and not in Europe. We 
must be careful not to stand just in the way, otherwise 
we may have to bear the brunt of it." If we had 
allowed ourselves to be thrust forward against Russia 
before the Russo-Japanese War, we should have had 
to bear the brunt. I also heard him say on some occa- 
sion : "If Mr. N. proposes something to you that 
w^ould be useful to him and harmful to you, it does not 
by any means follow that Mr. N. is a fool. But you 
are a fool if you agree to it." 

[The world war, which is impoverishing Europe, 
provides an opportunity which Japan is turning to her 
advantage. Not only does she profit in the same 
manner as, though to a lesser extent than, the United 
States by supplying war material, but she is getting 
a free hand in Asia, and at the same time both England 
and Russia set increasing store by her friendship. She 
has gained possession of our finest and most promising 
colony. Through their attack on Tsingtau the Japanese 
have lost the sympathy that we felt for them so long. 
It will lie with the Japanese to win back the confidence 
of the German Empire after its victory in the world 
war.] 



SO 



CHAPTER V 

EARLY DAYS OF WORLD POWER 

If Germany, after attaining the great aim of her 
Continental policy, was in a position, with her largely 
increased and steadily increasing powers, to reach out 
into the wide world, that by no means implied that we 
are at liberty to expend the whole of our national 
strength on enterprises outside the Continent of Europe. 

The transition to world politics opened out to us 
new political courses and discovered to us new national 
problems; but it did not imply the abandonment of all 
our old courses, or a fundamental change in our tasks. 
Our new world policy was to be an extension, not a 
shifting of the field of our political activities. 

We must never forget that the consolidation of our 
position as a Great Power in Europe has made it pos- 
sible for us to transform our industrial activity from 
a national into a world activity, and our Continental 
policy into a world policy. Our world policy is based 
upon the successes of our European policy. The mo- 
ment the firm foundation constituted by Germany's 
position as a Great European Power begins to totter, 
the whole fabric of our world policy will collapse. It 
is quite possible that a defeat in our world policy might 
leave our position in Europe unchanged ; but it is unthink- 
able that a sensible diminution of power and influence in 
Europe would leave our position in world politics un- 

51 



Imperial Germany 

shaken. We can only pursue our world policy on the 
basis of our European policy. The conservation of our 
position of power on the Continent is still, as it was in 
Bismarck's day, the first and last aim of our national 
policy. [This applies as well to the guarantees which 
must be one of the conditions of peace. Unless our 
position in Europe be assured and strengthened, we 
cannot profit by the acquisition of colonies.] 

Even if, at the behest of our national necessities, 
we have advanced beyond Bismarck in international 
affairs, nevertheless we must always maintain the 
principles of his European policy as the firm ground 
on which we take our stand. The new era must be 
rooted in the traditions of the old. A healthy develop- 
ment may in this case, too, be ensured by a common- 
sense compromise between the old and the new, between 
preservation and progress. To have renounced world 
politics would have been equivalent to condemning our 
national vitality to slow but sure decay. An adven- 
turous world policy, which should leave out of account 
our old European interests, might at first have seemed 
attractive and impressive, but it would soon have led to 
a crisis if not a catastrophe in our development. 

Sound political success is achieved much in the 
same way as mercantile success; by keeping a steady 
course between the Scylla of over-carefulness and the 
Charybdis of speculation. 

"The basis of a sound and sensible world policy is 
a strong, national home policy." So I said in Decem- 
ber, 1901, when a member of the Reichstag, Eugen 
Richter, tried to prove that the policy, which under- 
lay the new tariff and aimed at the protection of home 

52 



Politics and History 

industries and especially agrarian interests, was 
antagonistic to the new world policy which was 
founded on the interests of commerce. The apparent 
antagonism between the two was really a compromise; 
for German industrial activity in the international field 
had had its origin in the extremely flourishing condi- 
tion of home industries. 

The connection between politics and national in- 
dustry is far closer in our times than it was in the past. 
The home and foreign policies of modern States react 
directly upon the fluctuations and changes of their very 
highly developed industrial life, and every considerable 
industrial interest ultimately finds political expression 
in one way or another. World commerce, with all the 
various vital interests depending on it, has made our 
world policy a necessity. Our industrial activities at 
home demand a corresponding home policy. Between 
the two, some compromise must be sought and found. 

Seven years after the tariff debates the worth of 
this compromise between the home policy and world 
policy, which was much discussed then in political and 
industrial circles, was proved in the sphere of inter- 
national politics on the occasion of the Bosnian crisis 
in the year 1908. This event demonstrates more clearly 
than any academic discussion could do the real relation 
in which our oversea policy and our European policy 
stand to one another. German policy, up to the time 
when the Bosnian question was raised, was mainly 
controlled by consideration of our world policy. 
Not that Germany directed her foreign relations in 
accordance with her oversea interests, but that Eng- 
land's displeasure at the development of German 

53 



Imperial Germany 

foreign trade and especially at the growth of German 
sea power, influenced the grouping of the Powers and 
their attitude towards the German Empire. Ever since 
we began to build our fleet public opinion amongst the 
English has at times given way to fear of a German 
invasion ; and this fear was so groundless and so sense- 
less that it almost amounted to a panic. This, more- 
over, was systematically encouraged by a large section 
of the English Press which has a very powerful and 
widespread influence. 

During my term of office I was convinced that a 
conflict between Germany and England would never 
come to pass : — 

i. If we built a fleet which could not be attacked 
without very grave risk to the attacking party. 

ii. If we did not, beyond that, indulge in undue and 
unlimited shipbuilding and armaments, and did not 
overheat our marine boiler. 

iii. If we did not allow England to injure our repu- 
tation or our dignity, 

iv. but if we did nothing to make an irremediable 
breach between us and England. That is why I always 
solemnly refuted indecorous attacks, such as the offen- 
sive remarks of Mr. Joseph Chamberlain in January, 
1902, which were calculated to hurt our national sensi- 
bilities, no matter whence they came, but resisted all 
temptations to interfere in the Boer War, as that would 
have dealt English self-esteem a wound that would 
not heal. 

V. If we kept calm and cool, and neither affronted 
England nor ran after her. 

Since the beginning of the new century the influ- 

54 



Aim of Edward VII 

ence of King Edward VII. had made itself felt in 
English foreign politics. He was a monarch of ex- 
traordinary insight into the character of men, who 
knew to a nicety the art of handling them, and had 
wide and varied experience. His policy did not so 
much aim at directly opposing the interests of Ger- 
many as at gradually checkmating her by shifting the 
Balance of Power in Europe. By a series of ententes, 
for the sake of which considerable British interests were 
several times sacrificed, he sought to attach to England 
the other States of Europe, and so to isolate Germany. 
It was the period of the so-called English Einkreissung 
PolitikA With Spain she concluded a treaty with 
reference to the Mediterranean. France, of course, was 
well disposed towards the opponent of the German 
Empire, and the Franco-British treaty about Egypt 
and Morocco in the year 1904 drove the memory of 
Fashoda into the background. 

Russia also drew near to England, for owing to 
the after-effects of the heavy losses by land and at 
sea that she had sustained in her war with Japan, and 
also because of serious disturbances at home, she had 
decided to come to an arrangement with England about 
their respective spheres of interest in Asia. Italy was 
eagerly wooed. Similar attempts with regard to 
Austro-Hungary, on the occasion of the meeting of the 
monarchs at Ischl, failed, thanks to the unswerving 
loyalty to his ally of the aged Emperor, Franz Joseph. 
In Algeciras, although Germany defended her own 
national interests as part and parcel of the general 
international interests, she had a hard fight against 

* Policy of isolation. 
55 



Imperial Germany 

the French demands which had England's support. 
At that time the policy of encirclement to all appear- 
ances succeeded with regard to the grouping of the 
Powers; and yet the aims of German policy in respect 
of Morocco were practically fulfilled by the very fact 
that the conference was called, and by the more im- 
portant decisions it made. The question now was, how 
the system of ententes would work in the sphere of 
purely European politics. 

The final annexation by Austro-Hungary of the 
provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which, in accord- 
ance with the decisions of the Berlin Congress, Austria 
had occupied since 1878, led to a great European crisis. 
Russia opposed these proceedings on the part of 
Austria. Believing that an armed settlement of the 
old Austro-Russian rivalry in the Balkans was at hand, 
Servia, whose plans for aggrandisement would be 
thwarted, thought herself entitled to prepare for war 
against the Danube Monarchy. England sided with 
Russia, and the language of the English Press was 
almost more impassioned than the utterances of the 
Russians. The antagonistic policy of England seemed 
aimed less against Austria than against Germany, 
Austria's ally. For the first time the Austro-German 
alliance was to prove its durability and strength in a 
serious conflict. 

In my speeches in the Reichstag, as in my instruc- 
tions to our representatives abroad, I made it quite 
clear that Germany was resolved to preserve her alli- 
ance with Austria at any cost. The German sword 
was thrown into the scale of European decision, 
directly in support of our Austro-Hungarian ally, in- 

56 



Was Germany Checkmated? 

directly for the preservation of European peace, and 
above all for the sake of German credit and the main- 
tenance of our position in the world. 

The hour had now arrived by which it would 
be made manifest whether Germany really had been 
checkmated by the policy of isolation, and whether 
the Powers that had been drawn into the circle of Anti- 
German policy would find it consistent with their vital 
interests in Europe to take up a hostile attitude towards 
the German Empire and its allies. The course of 
the Bosnian crisis, in point of fact, made an end of 
the encircling policy of Edward VII. No Power was 
willing to subordinate its own European interests to the 
international interests of foreigners, or to sacrifice itself 
for others. [The Bosnian crisis caused no outbreak of 
war, nor did it seriously injure our relations with 
Russia.] The group of Powers whose influence had 
been so much overestimated at Algeciras, fell to pieces 
when faced with the tough problems of Continental 
policy. Italy sided with her allies, France awaited 
events and assumed an attitude not unfriendly to Ger- 
many, and the Emperor Nicholas decided on a friendly 
settlement of the existing difficulties. The ingenious 
encirclement of Germany, for some time the terror of 
timid souls, proved to be a diplomatic illusion devoid of 
political actuality. The Belgian Minister in Berlin, 
[Baron Greindl, summed up the results of this dip- 
lomatic campaign by which we secured a considerable 
victory, while at the same time the peace of the world 
remained undisturbed. After the Bosnian crisis was 
over, he wrote to his Government on April i, 1909 : 
"The proposals made by Sir Edward Grey and M. 

57 



Imperial Germany 

Iswolski, to hold a conference, and the negotiations 
concerning concerted action in Vienna, and the whole 
interchange of views on the part of London, Paris and 
St. Petersburg aimed at forcing Austro-Hungary to 
accept a compromise which would have been very likely 
a humiliation. This would have affected Germany as 
directly and as sensibly as Austro-Hungary, and would 
have dealt a severe blow to the confidence which the 
Austrians repose in their alliance with Germany. 
These intrigues were rendered nugatory by Germany's 
definite and resolute attitude, an attitude from which 
she never departed despite the pressure brought to bear 
upon her. Germany alone secured the maintenance of 
peace. The Powers belonging to the new group organ- 
ised by the King of England measured their strength 
with that of the Allied Powers of Central Europe, and 
showed themselves incapable of shaking the latter's 
alliance." Regarding the impression which our success 
had made in St. Petersburg, Baron Greindl wrote that 
the feeling there was that the Triple Entente did not 
afford Russia sufficient support to enable her to forgo 
at least normal relations with Germany. Experience 
had taught Russia how ineffective was the coalition 
formed by King Edward the very first time it was put 
to the test. The Belgian charge d'affaires in Paris 
reported at the same time that there was little trace 
left in France of the frantic enthusiasm with which the 
Russian alliance had originally been received.] 

The fundam^ental error in the whole affair had been 
the failure to set down at its full value as a factor 
in the situation the importance of the German Empire 
as a Great Power of Europe. It was certain that if any- 

58 



Strength of the Triple Alliance 

one succeeded in dealing our position in Europe a keen 
blow, our world policy would have sustained a mortal 
wound. In that, which was one of the premises on 
which the policy of isolation was based, calculations 
were correct. But we were not so easy to wound in 
our Continental position. The Triple Alliance was a 
force against which no country would let itself be 
thrust forward for the sake of remote interests, even if 
very clever diplomacy were employed in the attempt. 
It was a force with which no Power would dare to 
wage war except as a last resort in a vital question. 
Last, but not least, the Continental Powers were bound 
by many ties of common interest which could not be 
subordinated to the rivalry of Germany and England 
at sea and in commerce. England was the only country 
with which Germany's account in world policy showed 
a balance on the wrong side. As far as all the other 
European Powers were concerned, the contra-account 
of Continental politics was the decisive factor in the 
attitude they assumed towards Germany. [In the course 
of the past months of warfare the friendship of England 
has been unable to counteract the dread inspired by the 
hostility of Germany, nor has it availed to preserve 
from destruction those who had built their hopes 
upon it. This fact shows how wisely the Continental 
Powers acted at the time of the Bosnian crisis, when, 
besides considering the community of interests they 
had with Germany, they allowed the fear of their 
German neighbour, bursting with vigour and strength, 
to weigh more heavily in their counsels than even those 
same common interests did.] 

The great lesson of the Bosnian crisis was that our 

59 



Imperial Germany 

world policy rests on our Continental policy. The 
former brought us into conflict with England. The 
policy of isolation, which seemed likely to endanger our 
safety, was directed against the international trade and 
the sea power of Germany. By means of pur strength 
as a Continental Power, we tore the web which encom- 
passed us. The result was that a tide of sober reflection 
set in on the other side of the Channel, and this seemed 
the forerunner of a period in which a calm exchange of 
ideas and a sensible adjustment of interests might take 
place between the two nations. 

In the winter of 1909, immediately after the Bosnian 
crisis had taken a decisive turn, King Edward VII. 
paid a visit to the German Emperor and Empress in 
Berlin. This visit passed off in a satisfactory manner, 
and the king had a hearty reception. He, for his part, 
succeeded in emphasising the favourable impression 
made by his visit, by repeatedly giving expression to 
his sincere love of peace and his warm friendship, 
sentiments which found corroboration soon after in the 
Speech from the Throne and the Debate on the Address 
in the English Parliament. This last visit of King 
Edward VII. aroused good hope for the future and shed 
a pleasant light, not only on the personal relations 
of the King with Germany, but also on those between 
two great nations who had every reason to respect one 
another, and to vie with each other amicably in the 
work of peace. The attempt to extend the opposition 
between England and Germany into a system of com- 
bined international policy [was not repeated until 1914.] 

[The alliance between the three great Powers of 
Central Europe was founded entirely upon Germany's 

60 



A Guarantee of Peace 

strong position in Continental politics.] European 
history has seldom, if ever, seen an alliance of such 
strength and durability as the Triple Alliance. In the 
year 1879 Bismarck concluded the alliance with Austro- 
Hungary; in 1883 Italy joined it. For thirty years 
the treaties of alliance were regularly renewed, and 
there was never any ground for the hopes of its ill- 
wishers and the fears of its well-wishers with regard 
to the durability of the Triple Alliance. In so far as 
a term of party politics can be applied to international 
politics, which, of course, differ completely in aim, 
cause, and effect, one may characterise the Triple 
Alliance as one with emphatically conservative ten- 
dencies. Herein, probably, the chief cause of its 
strength must be sought. It was neither desire of con- 
quest nor unsatisfied ambition that brought the States 
of the Triple Alliance together, and kept them united. 
The three mid-European States were bound to each 
other by the firm resolve to maintain the existing 
balance of power in Europe, and should a forcible 
change be attempted, to prevent it if need be by force. 
The united strength of Middle Europe stood in the 
path of any revolution — any European policy which 
might elect to follow the courses pursued by Louis XIV. 
or Napoleon I. This alliance was like a mighty fortifi- 
cation dividing the Continent into two. The wish to 
maintain existing conditions implies, as far as inter- 
national politics is concerned, a desire for peace. The 
founders of the Triple Alliance intentionally created 
a guarantee of peace. This alliance more than once in 
the course of the last thirty years warded off the rising 
danger of war. 

61 



Imperial Germany 

[Prince Bismarck, a second Hercules, accomplished 
many great labours in order to secure for the German 
people the position they deserved. If I were asked which 
of these is the most admirable from the point of view 
of foreign politics, I should say without hesitation : 
The wisdom and energy with which Prince Bismarck, 
in the face of much opposition, worked for the re- 
establishment of the connection with Austria, as soon as 
the German problem had been solved in accordance with 
Prussian ideas and in favour of the house of Hohen- 
zollern. While the battlefield of Koniggratz was still 
darkened by the smoke from the guns, his eagle eye 
discovered on the horizon the possibility of co-operation 
on a sound basis between Germany, united under Prus- 
sian leadership, and a new independent Austro-Hun- 
garian monarchy established in rejuvenated strength. 
He never departed from the rule of refraining 
from all interference in the home politics of the Dual 
Monarchy, both in Austria and in Hungary. His cele- 
brated saying that, if the Emperor of Austria mounted 
his horse, all his peoples would follow him against a 
foreign foe, was justified by the course of events long 
years after it was spoken. What he said to the German- 
Austrians still holds good to-day: "Serve your Em- 
peror faithfully, so shall you best serve the German 
Empire." He was right, too, in attaching great im- 
portance to the Magyar element as a factor in Austro- 
Hungary's future and in our alliance with her. In the 
summer of 1884, when I was about to take up my 
duties as charg^ d'affaires in St. Petersburg, I accepted 
an invitation to go to Varzin, and I shall never forget 
the interview in which Prince Bismarck discoursed 

62 



Attitude of Italy 

upon the Balkan peoples. "For the most part," said 
he, "they dislike us, but that does not much matter, 
for God in His wisdom has ordained that they dislike 
each other even more." Then turning his attention to 
Hungary, he said: *'The Hungarians are naturally 
keen, have a great deal of character, and are clever too. 
It is no small matter to maintain one's independence for 
centuries against such odds as they have done. For 
Austria they are preferable to the Slavs, for no magnet 
abroad attracts them. And even though there are Hun- 
garians who grumble at the ' Suabians,' that is of 
small account, for vital interests make Germans and 
Hungarians dependent on each other to such an extent 
that every European crisis must unite them, and only 
the grossest stupidity on both sides could keep them 
permanently apart."] 

The attitude of Italy towards the Triple Alliance 
has undergone many a change in the course of thirty 
years; these changes in Italy were due partly to in- 
ternal political events, partly to the peculiar develop- 
ment of certain Mediterranean questions. But before 
the present war our opponents did not succeed in 
severing Italy's connection with the Triple Alliance, 
although at times they made pertinacious and eager 
attempts to do so. 

The relations between Italy and Austria are natur- 
ally more complex than the terms on which we stand 
with Italy. The memory of the passionate struggle 
lasting for half a century, which the Italian people 
carried on against the Austrian dominion in Italy, has 
never faded. Such recollections were kept fresh in the 
mind of the nation by monuments, inscriptions, a 

63 



Imperial Germany 

voluminous literature, and the fiery patriotism of the 
Italians. Moreover, the fact that nearly a million 
Italians belong to the Monarchy of the Habsburgs has 
always been a sore point. 

[A distinguished Italian statesman, the Ambassador 
Count Nigra, was right when he once said to me ; 
"Austria and Italy can only be either allies or enemies.'* 
That they should remain allies lay in the interest of 
both countries, especially Italy's. France is a more 
dangerous rival for Italy than Austria, for the wisest 
French statesmen have always regarded the Italophil 
policy of the Emperor Napoleon III. as a grave mis- 
take, and to this very day the French are impatient of 
Italian competition in the Mediterranean, and they will 
never cease in their efforts to predominate in those 
waters which Napoleon I. called " un lac frangais" If 
Austrian officials in Trieste and the Trentino have not 
always fulfilled their duties with great tact, at least the 
Italian element in the population of both places has lived 
there for centuries unmolested, whereas the Serbians and 
Croatians on the Adriatic coast wage war to the knife 
against the Italians, and have in many cases driven 
them away; and the whole world knows how badly 
heterogeneous elements of the population are wont to 
fare under Russian rule or Russian influence. 

As for England, there is widespread sympathy in 
Italy for this country, which once helped the Italian 
national movement, and whose institutions served as 
models for the Italians during their struggles for libera- 
tion. Nevertheless, it was short-sighted of the Italians 
to let their feelings run away with them ; they should 
realise that England, in the course of her policy, has 

64 



Anglo-French Intrigues 

often cleverly made others serve her purpose, but has 
hardly ever sacrificed herself for another's sake. The in- 
solent egotism with which England denies her Italian 
ally coal and cotton, two things which are necessities for 
the latter, put Italian patience to a hard test. Italy and 
Germany were clearly dependent upon one another for 
many and weighty reasons : the absence of all rivalry 
between the nations, and — since the memory of the 
struggle in the Teutoburger Wald and of the Battle 
of Legnano has grown faint — the absence of any dis- 
turbing reminiscence, the similarity of their historical 
development and the existence of common dangers 
which might threaten them in the same ways. It 
required nine months of intrigue on the part of the 
French and the English before the influence of this 
community of interests was undermined, for it had its 
foundation in the very nature of things, and was as 
clear from the point of view of history as from that of 
practical politics.] 

Our relations with Italy were, contrary to the 
accepted view of the character of the two nations, re- 
garded by us from the sentimental, and by the Italians 
from the common-sense, point of view. We were apt 
at times to take too unfavourable view of these relations 
and at times to value them too highly from an excess of 
sentimentality. Neither at Algeciras, nor on account 
of her Tripoli expedition, nor shortly before, at the 
interview at Racconigi, did Italy contemplate severing 
her connection with us. In a few minor questions 
Italy voted at Algeciras with the Western Powers and 
against us. This was cleverly taken up by the French 
Press, and presented to the world as an indication 
F 65 



Imperial Germany 

that Italy would renounce the Triple Alliance and 
enter into friendly relations with France. In other 
and more important questions, Italy supported our 
point of view at Algeciras, and furthered our wishes. 
Our representative at Algeciras, Herr von Radowitz, 
always recognised this, and repeatedly did battle against 
what he was convinced were unjust attacks upon Italy's 
attitude at the conference. It was in pursuance of his 
wish that in the Reichstag in November, 1906, I com- 
bated the reproaches that were cast upon Italy. Later, 
too, Herr von Radowitz expressed his opinion of the 
Italian delegates, to the following effect : that perhaps 
so far as appearances went they had been too anxious 
to place Franco-Italian relations in the most favourable 
light possible, but that in actual fact they had rendered 
us good service. The contrary opinion has just as little 
foundation as the widespread belief in Russia, that 
at the Berlin Congress Bismarck cheated and betrayed 
the Russians. 

Italy most certainly had interests that lie outside the 
sphere of the Triple Alliance. We ourselves had 
interests beyond the scope of Triple Alliance policy, 
and Austria did not lack them either. Prince Bismarck 
sharply emphasised this fact at times. The Triple 
Alliance would not have remained intact so long if it 
had demanded from the allied Powers absolute com- 
munity in all their enterprises and in all the courses 
of their policy. 

By way of comparison, a fact of the internal political 
constitution of our State may be applied, cum grano 
salis, to characterise the Triple Alliance. Just as the Ger- 
man Empire gains in security and stability because its 

66 



An Asset to Italy 

constitution, while requiring absolute obedience in all 
great national and political questions, leaves the single 
States free to deal with their own narrower problems, so 
the Triple Alliance [according to the frequently and em- 
phatically expressed opinion of its founder] united the 
three Great Powers of Middle Europe on the great aim 
of Continental politics for which the Alliance was 
founded, but left them absolute freedom in the pursuit 
of their particular national interests. The existence of 
Italy, Austria and Germany is rooted in European 
politics, and their roots are many and were firmly inter- 
twined. But the branches of the trees were to be able 
to spread freely in every direction. The Triple Alliance 
was not intended to act as the shears which check free 
growth without cogent reason. 

[Thus the Triple Alliance existed for more than thirty 
years, and it proved of greater value to Italy than to 
the Central Powers. Relying on the Triple Alliance, 
which safeguarded her interests in Europe, Italy was 
able to devote her attention to colonial politics, and 
could count on the support of her allies to consolidate 
her successes. 

Ever since the Triple Alliance was concluded there 
have been politicians who refused to recognise the value 
of Italy's participation.] Their hesitation arose from a 
doubt as to whether Italy would be able and willing to 
go hand in hand with Austria and us in every possible 
complication of international politics. Even if these 
fears were justified, this was no final argument against 
the value of Italy's participation in the Triple Alliance. 
Supposing Italy were not able in every conceivable cir- 
cumstance to go to all lengths with Austria and us, 

67 



Imperial Germany 

and if we and Austria likewise were not able to support 
Italy in all complications of international politics, even 
then each one of the three Powers was, by virtue of 
the existing alliance, prevented for a long time from 
assisting the enemy of the others. That is what Prince 
Bismarck meant when he once remarked that it was 
sufficient for him that an Italian corporal with the 
Italian flag and a drummer beside him should array 
themselves against the West, i.e. France, and not 
against the East, i.e. Austria. 

In the event of a dispute in Europe everything else de- 
pended on how the question was put. The full and true 
value of an alliance can only be tested in a grave crisis. 
[As far as political foresight can tell, one may say that 
Italy will find that she made a mistake when, breaking 
away from the Triple Alliance, she threw in her lot with 
our enemies; this course was opposed to the traditions 
and ideas of many of her best statesmen, from Cavour to 
Crispi, and, moreover, it cannot be defended from the 
point of view of practical politics. I will not discuss 
the question as to whether and how the Italians might 
have been prevented at the beginning of the war from 
deserting their allies. It would have been chiefly to 
the advantage of Italy if a breach with Austria had 
been avoided. Will Italy gain by her new alliance 
what she has given up with the old? Italy's most im- 
portant interests lie in the Mediterranean; these have 
always been regarded with cool indifference by England 
and with traditional jealousy by France ; as for Russia, 
she has always regarded them with frank hostility both 
on account of her desire for the Dardanelles and because 
of Serbian pretensions on the eastern shore of the 

G8 



The Wooing of Islam 

Adriatic Sea. Will these things change now ? Would 
Italy not have done better to stand aside from a war 
which has cost her hecatombs of human lives and 
millions of money, without hitherto enabling her to gain 
even a fraction of what she might have got in a friendly 
way from Austria? Of course, we should have pre- 
ferred it, if Austria had been able to employ on the 
Eastern front the considerable forces she now opposes 
to Italy. Italy did not declare war on Austria until the 
battle in the Carpathians, which had lasted for months, 
had been decided against the Russians by the fact that 
the Austro-German forces broke through on the Dunajek 
and the military situation of the Central Powers had 
thus turned in our favour.] 

We have carefully cultivated good relations with 
Turkey and Islam, especially since the journey to the 
East undertaken by our Emperor and Empress. These 
relations were not of a sentimental nature, for the con- 
tinued existence of Turkey served our interests from 
the industrial, military and political points of view. 
[I might sum up my policy towards Turkey by saying 
that my efforts were directed towards securing a support 
in the East, by a well-organised and independent 
Turkey. For that reason I tried to shield the 
Turkish Empire from injury, mediated between her 
and the Balkan States, prevented concerted action on 
the part of these States against Turkey, warned the 
latter against imprudent proceedings in Albania and 
Arabia, and saw no reason why we should not be on 
equally good terms with the Young Turks as with the 
Sultan Abdul Hamid.] Industrially and financially, 
Turkey offered us a rich and fertile field of activity, to 

69 



Imperial Germany 

which Rodbertus and Friedrich List had already drawn 
attention, and which we have cultivated with much 
profit. 

[The present time shows that, in addition to this, 
the military strength of Turkey is an important factor, 
and that the Osmanli race has preserved intact the 
soldierly virtues which it so often displayed in the 
past. By the loyal and prudent policy which made her 
take her stand beside us from the very first, and by the 
power of resistance she showed in meeting the attack 
of the three Allies, Turkey has given proof that the 
"sick man" of the Emperor Nicholas I. is still full of 
vigour, now that the latter's great-grandson reigns, 
sixty years after the Crimean War. For a long time 
Turkey was an important link in the chain of our politi- 
cal relations, but our connection with her will be of even 
greater importance to us after the war. The trouble 
expended on Turco-German relations in the past finds 
ample reward in the present, and may bear still better 
fruit for us, as for our Turkish Ally, in the future. 
Turkey, strengthened and rejuvenated by the attitude 
she has adopted in this war, has stood firm in the Dar- 
danelles and on the Tigris, and has proved anew to the 
world her right to exist as a strong and independent 
State ; hers will be the great task of mediating between 
the East and the West. 

It had always seemed to me to be wise to culti- 
vate friendly relations with all the Balkan States, in 
so far as this did not injure Turkish interests. Dur- 
ing the six years which I spent as German Minister in 
Bucharest, I had the opportunity of seeing what aston- 
ishing progress Roumania had made in the last half- 

70 



The Position of Greece 

century under the guidance of King Carol, one of the 
wisest and most successful rulers in history. Roumania 
can do nothing more efficacious to maintain her great 
position than to cultivate with care her friendly and 
confidential relations with her Hungarian neighbour. 
Hungary and Roumania are interdependent for this, 
if for no other reason, that they neither of them belong 
to the Slav race, and that they both have only one real 
enemy, Panslavism. This same enemy threatens the 
sturdy Bulgarian people who, led by a monarch of great 
political astuteness, have proved to be exceptionally 
capable in utraque fortuna — in good fortune and in bad 
— and who have a great future before them. Plato once 
said of the old Greeks that they sat around the Medi- 
terranean as frogs around a pond. The present-day 
Greeks, owing to their intellectual energy and their 
inventiveness, are an important factor on the shores of 
that beautiful sea. There was a time when the Serbians, 
who caught the attention of Goethe and Ranke, sought 
their education in Germany, and until the present war 
they did their best to make their economic relations with 
us profitable. The Serbians have allowed themselves to 
be lured to destruction by the Panslavist tempter, and 
are paying the penalty now with their property and their 
lives.] 



7» 



CHAPTER VI 

RUSSIA AND FRANCE 

Friendly relations with the Empire of the Tsars was 
a legacy bequeathed to the new German Empire by 
Prussia. Russia and Prussia have hardly ever been 
antagonists, if we except the time of the Empress Eliza- 
beth's hatred of Frederick the Great, a hatred based on 
personal rather than material grounds, and of the mock 
war between Russia and Prussia in 1812. The diffi- 
cult task of dividing Poland certainly gave rise to some 
temporary friction, but it did not result in any serious 
conflict of views. Indeed, the Polish affair often 
brought Russia and Prussia into closer touch. [The 
possession of Polish territories acquired by the division 
of Poland was] a warning to both these countries not 
to quarrel, but to look on their common efforts to ward 
off attempts at re-establishing the independence of 
Poland as a bridge on which Russia and Prussia could 
continue to meet. 

During the first half of the nineteenth century the 
relations between the ruling houses of Russia and 
Prussia were more intimate than is usual; and this 
intimacy found expression in the policy of the two 
countries. In the dark times of the Crimean War 
Prussia's friendly attitude considerably eased Russia's 
position; and a counterpart to this is found in the 
attitude which the Emperor Alexander II. adopted dur- 

72 



The Berlin Congress 

ing the Franco-German War. [Arguments have often 
arisen as to whether we are more indebted to the 
Russians, or they to us. The amount of the debt be- 
tween the two States has often varied. Whether the 
Russians rendered us more valuable assistance in 
1 8 13- 14, 1866 and 1870-71, or we were of greater use to 
them during the Crimean War, the Russo-Turkish War 
of 1877-78 and the Russo-Japanese War, can, of course, 
not be determined with mathematical accuracy, and 
such a calculation, even if it were possible, could serve 
no useful political purpose. A too greatly emphasised 
debt of gratitude is even more irksome to a nation than 
to a private individual, and the debtor tries to rid him- 
self of the burden.] When, not long after the Peace of 
Frankfurt was signed, in September, 1872, the Emperors 
of Russia and Austria went to the capital of the new 
German Empire to visit the venerable sovereign who 
had emerged victorious from the great struggle, 
Prince Bismarck had created a new basis for Euro- 
pean policy. The united strength of the empires of 
Eastern Europe cooled the French nation's ardour for 
revenge; indeed, this union was an excellent guarantee 
of peace. Bismarck also expected that the closer con- 
nection of Russia with the conservative tendencies of 
Germany and Austria's foreign policy would stem the 
tide of Panslavism which at that time was rapidly 
rising in Russia. As he expressed it: "Russia, the 
wild elephant, was to walk between the two tame 
elephants, Germany and Austria." 

The Berlin Congress, 1878, occasioned a slight rift 
in the hitherto unbroken concord of the Powers of 
Eastern Europe. After the heavy losses of a long and 

73 



Imperial Germany 

unexpectedly difficult campaign, Russia, who had not 
cared to risk the occupation of Constantinople, had to 
submit in Berlin to considerable modifications of the 
Peace of San Stefano. These alterations in their 
essentials may be traced back to secret arrangements 
made by the St. Petersburg Cabinet with Austria before 
the war against Turkey, and with England at the con- 
clusion of an armistice. The results of the Berlin Con- 
gress were hardly satisfactory from the point of view of 
the Russian people; and the Russian Press, which in 
the last decade had greatly strengthened its influence on 
public opinion, put all the blame on Prince Bismarck, 
the chairman of the Congress and its most distinguished 
member. The Russian Imperial Chancellor, Prince 
Gortschakov, whose personal relations with Prince 
Bismarck had become gradually more and more un- 
friendly, not only gave free rein to the Press, but dis- 
cussed with a French journalist the idea of a Franco- 
Russian Alliance, though this, of course, at the time, 
was nothing more than an idea. When the Emperor 
Alexander II. also seemed to be yielding to anti-Ger- 
man influences, Bismarck, in 1879, concluded the treaty 
of alliance with Austro-Hungary, which became the 
basis of the Triple Alliance. After the conclusion of 
this alliance. The Times correspondent in Paris, M. de 
Blowitz, a very versatile man, said to me: "That is 
probably the best stroke of diplomacy that Bismarck 
has yet achieved." 

Nevertheless Prince Bismarck, with his accustomed 
energy, set to work to place us once more on our old 
footing with Russia. [In particular during the reign of 
the Emperor Alexander III., he pursued a policy toward 

74 



Bismarck's Russian Policy 

Russia that was based on the personality of the Tsar, 
and he gave as his reason for so doing the fact that, 
despite the disHke of Germany that had always existed 
in wide circles in Russia, Prussia had done good busi- 
ness with Alexander I., Nicholas I. and Alexander II. 
Before the war, as the English and French Press admit, 
and as their diplomats well knew, there had been im- 
portant factors in Russia which favoured friendly rela- 
tions with Germany. Of course, that is all done with 
since the war began. In some quarters the reproach 
was heard against Prince Bismarck, that he had not 
always preserved the independence of German policy 
and the dignity of the German nation in his dealings 
with Russia. Such reproaches are as childish as they 
are unjust. 

Prince Bismarck was, indeed, convinced that Ger- 
many had an interest in preserving calm and secure 
relations with her neighbour in the East. Even the ex- 
tensive and apparently threatening military preparations 
of Russia and her concentration of troops on our 
Eastern frontier in the 'eighties did not avail to shake 
this conviction of his. He spoke openly of this in 
public, with least reserve in his speech in the Reich- 
stag on February 6, 1888. More than once, too, he 
hinted that he had no wish to burden his policy with 
desires for revenge on the part of Russia, in addition to 
those which the French cherished. Also in considera- 
tion of England's position. Prince Bismarck did not 
wish a definite quarrel with Russia, because, if Eng- 
land should become our avowed and permanent enemy, 
we should chain her to Russia ; and if we left ourselves 
no possibility of an understanding with Russia, we 

75 



Imperial Germany 

should thereby facilitate England's policy and secure 
her standing in the world. Soon after the conclusion 
of the Austro-German alliance he actually] succeeded 
in materially improving Russo-German relations, and, 
what is more, the meeting of the three Emperors at 
Skierniewice, in 1884, led to a new rapprochement of the 
three Empires. 

The peace of Europe was assured in an almost 
ideal fashion by the Triple Alliance on the one hand 
and the entente of the Powers of Eastern Europe 
on the other. But from the very first a limit was set 
to this ideal state of afifairs by the many antagonistic 
aims of Russian and Austrian policy in the East. It 
was only a question of time that this antagonism 
should become manifest, for it did not depend on the 
goodwill or illwill of statesmen, but on differences in the 
very real political interests of the two Empires. 

It was the Bulgarian question which again upset the 
good relations between Austria and Russia. The 
friendly understanding of the three Empires did not 
survive the stormy summer of 1886. It is well known 
that Prince Bismarck himself declared that in the face 
of the new situation he had done his best, while remain- 
ing loyal to the Triple Alliance, to preserve a friendly 
understanding between Germany and Russia. To this 
end he had assured a more or less exceptional posi- 
tion for German policy behind the defensive position 
of the Triple Alliance, by means of the so-called Re- 
insurance Treaty with Russia. Later on he spoke fre- 
quently about the motives that had induced him to con- 
clude the treaty, and about the value and bearing of the 
same. [This subject was treated most fully in that 

76 



The Reinsurance Treaty 

article in the Hamburger Nachrichten of October 24, 
1896, which, as we now know, was directly inspired by 
him.] He blamed his successor for not renewing the 
treaty, and he pointed out that it was after this failure to 
renew that the Franco-Russian Alliance was concluded 
automatically. Russia, no longer bound by any con- 
vention, and France in her isolation had joined forces, 
after the dividing wall between them had been removed. 
Prince Bismarck considered this change on the part of 
Russia, from the side of the German Empire, to that of 
the bitterest enemy of Germany, a great strengthening 
of France's position among the Powers, and one which 
would materially increase the difficulties of German 
policy. [He always emphatically denied that the Re- 
insurance Treaty with Russia was an act of unfriendli- 
ness toward Austria. Both in conversation and in utter- 
ances in the Hamburger Nachrichten, the great states- 
man repeatedly declared that he had always clearly 
realised that it was to Germany's interest that the 
integrity of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy should be 
preserved, but that the maintenance of peace in Europe 
was as important for Austria as for Germany. 

For these reasons Prince Bismarck thought it his 
duty, as he said in his never-to-be-forgotten speech in 
the Reichstag on February 6, 1888, to prevent Europe 
from being plunged into a war that would reach from 
Moscow to the Pyrenees, and from the North Sea to 
Palermo, the result of which no man could foresee, and 
after the conclusion of which, as he expressed it, one 
would hardly know why one had been fighting. Prince 
Bismarck considered that his greatest achievement in 
foreign politics was the prevention of a coalition war 

77 



Imperial Germany 

against us, and up to the conclusion of his term of office 
he was unwearied in his efforts to avoid such a catas- 
trophe. In 1896, shortly before the end of his days, in 
an interview with the chief editor of the Hamburger 
Nachrichten, he said that Austria too must desire to 
avoid a war that would exact the most monstrous sacri- 
fices of life, money and power from all the Continental 
nations. Therefore the German Reinsurance Treaty 
with Russia had also been in Austria's interest, since it 
had served to assure the peace of the world. It was 
characteristic of Prince Bismarck that, in any relation 
of alliance with another State, he should claim to take 
the lead, and would never follow in the wake of another. 
Talleyrand used to say that every alliance resembled the 
relationship between a horse and his rider, but he always 
added: ^' Quant a moi, je prefere faire le cavalier,*'^ 
Prince Bismarck was of the same opinion.] 

At any rate the Anglo-Russian Alliance denoted 
a very significant change in the international situa- 
tion. In the 'nineties we Germans had to face British 
rivalry, roused by the rapid development of German 
foreign trade and the construction of the German fleet, 
while we were taken in the rear by the Dual Alliance, 
by which France desired to profit as much as possible 
in order to realise her hopes. Thus placed, we had to 
seek and find a transition to world politics. At first this 
was a narrow path along which we had to advance with 
great care. Our attitude towards Russia during the 
Russo-Japanese War was modelled on our relations 
with England during the Boer War. Without injury 
to our duty of strictly proper neutrality towards Japan, 

1 For my part, I prefer to be the rider. 

78 



The Dual Alliance 

we adopted a very friendly attitude towards Russia. In- 
deed, our neutrality with respect to Russia was even 
a shade more kindly than that of France. 

After the Russo-Japanese War there was a slight 
coolness in Franco-Russian relations, w^hereas there 
was an increase of warmth in those between Russia 
and Germany. The Dual Alliance had gradually lost 
a great deal of its original keenness of edge, not so 
much on account of the weakening of Russia, which, 
as was the case after the Crimean War, was often ex- 
aggerated, as on account of the restoration of confi- 
dence between Russia and Germany. The various 
stages of this re-establishment of friendly relations w^ere 
marked by the repeated meetings between monarchs 
of the two Empires. After the Bosnian crisis, too, 
normal relations between Russia and Germany were 
quickly restored, as was proved by the particularly 
satisfactory meeting between the Emperor William and 
the Tsar, which took place amongst the islands off 
the coast of Finland in June, 1909. [As Bismarck's Re- 
insurance Treaty had not been renewed, it] did not lie 
in Germany's power to separate Russia from France, 
nor could she harbour any intention of so doing. Since 
a treaty of alliance had been concluded between Russia 
and France, and had penetrated the national senti- 
ments of the two peoples, it had become impossible, 
and would for some time to come continu^io be impos- 
sible, for us to sever thS'tres ul lliTsalliance, and bind 
Russia to our interests by means of a treaty. 

But Germany could blunt the keen edge of the Dual 
Alliance by putting her relations with Russia on a 
sound basis. It was possible to accomplish this task, 

79 



Imperial Germany 

and for a long time it was done. Its accomplishment 
was rendered considerably easier by the personal rela- 
tions subsisting between our Emperor and the Emperor 
Nicholas. The hopes built by the French chauvinists 
on the Russian Alliance were not fulfilled for twenty- 
four years. At times Russian statesmen even gave 
France to understand that Russia was not willing to 
serve the cause of the French policy of revenge. The 
high hopes with which the French acclaimed the con- 
clusion of the Dual Alliance gradually faded. The 
French authorities were forced to seek some compensa- 
tion for their disappointed hopes, for the sake of the 
sentiments and aspirations which ultimately control 
public feeling in France. They found this compensa- 
tion in the Anglo-French entente, which at times 
seemed a greater menace to us than the Dual Alliance. 
The resentment of the French against the rulers of 
Alsace-Lorraine sought and found an ally in the wide- 
spread disquietude and jealousy of the English, which 
increased in proportion as our navy grew and our 
oversea interests developed. 

The Dual Alliance completely lacked any permanent 
interests hostile to the German Empire which are 
common to the two Powers. There is probably no 
European Power which so rarely stood in the way of 
Russia's claims in the spheres of politics and industry 
as Germany. [Of course that has changed since a ter- 
rible war has broken out between Russia and us. We 
now have the right, and moreover it is our duty, to 
demand solid guarantees that East Prussia, the province 
which in the course of centuries has suffered more than 
any other from enemy invasions, shall not in future 

80 



Russia of the Future 

be exposed to barbarous devastation. King Lud- 
wig III. was the mouthpiece of the Bavarian and the 
German peoples when he said that we required a peace 
that would ensure for us many decades of tranquillity. 
Such enormous sacrifices must not be made in vain. 
Since we are now on bad terms with Russia, we need 
very considerably increased security in the East. As 
matters now stand, this security can only subsist in a 
rectification of our unfavourable Eastern frontiers, 
which will safeguard us from new invasions. 

Of course we cannot desire that Russia should regain 
her strength. But we shall have to reckon with this 
contingency, because of the huge increase of the Rus- 
sian population, in which the excess of births is far 
greater than amongst us, and because of the homo- 
geneity of the mass of the people, both as regards race 
and religion — unless, indeed, Russia falls- a victim to 
political or social disintegration or else loses the 
Ukraine, her granary and the foundation of her in- 
dustry. Whether the loss of parts of Poland would 
weaken Russia is questionable. Before our relations 
with Russia were irremediably damaged, we were 
justified in cultivating them with care. Russian 
and German interests did not come into direct con- 
flict anywhere. Moreover, Germany was the country 
to which Russia sent most of her exports, and 
from which she obtained most of her imports.] Con- 
flicting interests between England and France are 
certainly not wanting either. Up to quite recent times 
England's greatest and most important acquisitions in 
the wider world were made at the expense of France ; this 
was the case in the Sudan, and earlier in Further India. 
G 8i 



Imperial Germany 

But for France oversea politics are not vital, and there- 
fore she was at liberty to subordinate her international 
interests to England's, thereby circumscribing Franco- 
British differences for the sake of an Anglo-French 
agreement. France paid this high price for England's 
friendship after she had been disappointed in her hopes 
of the Dual Alliance. The resentment against Germany 
might well be called the soul of French policy ; the other 
international questions are more of a material nature and 
only concern the body. 

[No hopelessly conflicting interests separated us 
from either England or Russia until August, 1914. 
The encounters we had had with Russia in the Seven 
Years' War, and in 18 12, had left no political or 
national animosity in their wake. England and Ger- 
many had never crossed swords. With France 
it was otherwise. Warfare between Germany and 
Russia had been merely episodic, whereas, owing to 
the fatality of history, Germany had for centuries been 
the object of France's predatory instincts. Forty-five 
years ago Ranke wrote to Thiers that Germany was 
waging war against Louis XIV. ; we can with equal 
right say to-day that we are forced to be en vedette 
against Richelieu and Louis XIV., Napoleon and 
Gambetta.] 

The irreconcilability of France was a factor that 
we had to reckon with in our political calculations. 
[On February i, 1914, the French historian, Ernest 
Lavisse, a man of recognised scientific and political 
ability, wrote in his preface to the Memoirs of Augusta 
Lalance, the Alsatian : " La France n^admet pas la 
sinistre conception bismarckienne, elle n*admet pas 

82 



Alsace-Lorraine 

V argument de V ethnographies ni que la force suffise a 
creer un droit sur les dmes, Et les Allemands ne com- 
prendront jamaiSy jamais que nous sommes attaches a 
r Alsace-Lorraine par un devoir d'honneur." ^ In the 
Revue des Deux Mondes, the best French monthly re- 
view, another French historian, Henri Welschinger, ex- 
pressed his opinion of the relation in which Germany 
and France stand to one another in the following words : 
"LI y a litteralement un ahime entre la France et VAlle- 
magne, et rien ne pourra le comhlery 2] 

It always seemed to me weakness to entertain the 
hope of a real and sincere reconciliation with France so 
long as we had no intention of giving up Alsace- 
Lorraine. And, of course, there was not, and is not, 
any such intention in Germany. There certainly 
were many individual points in which we could see 
eye to eye with France, and in which we could co- 
operate, at any rate, from time to time. We rightly 
endeavoured to preserve polite, calm, and peaceful re- 
lations with France. But beyond that we could not 
pursue any will-o'-the-wisp delusions, otherwise we 
might have met with the fate of the Astronomer in La 
Fontaine, who, while gazing at the stars, fell into the 
pit which lay at his feet, but which he had not seen. 
In this case the pit was called " Le trou des Vosges" 

Also, as regards France, we could not hope too 
much from attentions and amenities : the small change 

* France does not admit that the sinister Bismarckian conception 
is true, she does not admit the ethnographical argument, nor does 
ahe consider that brute force suffices to create a right binding the 
aouls of men. The Germans will never, never understand that we 
are attached to Alsace-Lorraine by ties of duty and honour. 

* There is literally an abyss betwixt France and Germany, and 
nothing can ever fill it up. | 

83 



Imperial Germany 

of international intercourse. The resentment against 
Germany lay too deep in the hearts of the French for 
us to be able to overcome it by cheap expressions of 
friendship. France was never so hard hit, not even 
after the catastrophic defeats of i8 12-15, ^s by the war 
of 1870-71. In France there is no comprehension of 
the fact that what seems to them the brutal severity of 
a conqueror was really a matter of national necessity 
to us Germans. Perhaps in course of time the French 
nation will grow reconciled to the decisions of the 
Peace of Frankfurt, when it realises that they are irre- 
vocable; [especially if we succeed in further improving 
our strategic position with regard to France, a position 
which at the present time is still unfavourable.] But 
so long as France thinks she perceives a possibility of 
winning back Alsace-Lorraine, either by her own un- 
aided efforts or with the help of others, so long will 
she consider the existing arrangement provisional and 
not final. [If in the past the idea of an Anglo-Franco- 
German or a Russo-Franco-German entente was mooted 
from time to time, it was always inspired by the wish 
that Germany, in order to make co-operation on the 
part of France possible, would agree to a settlement 
of the Alsace-Lorraine ** question*' which should fall 
in with the ideas of France and give her satisfaction. 
This idea arose from a complete misapprehension of 
German interests and of German character. 

Even such Frenchmen as do not envisage their 
relations to Germany solely from the point of view of 
revenge,] claim understanding for this feeling with which 
the majority of the people are deeply imbued. They 
say it is a proof of a lively sense of honour, if a nation 

84 



A Policy of Splendid Adventures 

suffers so keenly from a single injury to its pride that 
the desire for retribution becomes the ruling passion 
of the people. It is quite true that for many centuries 
France was responsible for the spirit of unrest which 
troubled the history of Europe. We had to fortify 
our position in the West in an enduring manner, so 
as to safeguard our peace from fresh disturbances. The 
remedy has not been altogether unavailing, not only 
so far as Germany is concerned, but for the whole of 
Europe. But the French see things in a different light. 
The policy of splendid adventures, which often has 
cost Europe its peace, and has repeatedly forced 
France's neighbours to strain their powers to the 
utmost, has made the past of France a record of glory, 
by w^hich the peculiar ambition of the French has 
found expression in the grandest and most spontaneous 
fashion. French history differs from the German in 
this point, among many others : that the greatest and 
most dramatic moments in which the fate of nations 
is decided are found in the story of her wars of con- 
quest, whereas the most glorious pages of German 
history tell of deeds of national defence. We wish to 
prevent the return of such times as those of Louis XIV. 
and of Napoleon I., and for our greater security have 
therefore strengthened our frontiers against France; 
but it is just such times as these for which many 
Frenchmen long, and which in moments of excitement 
are the goal of the desires of the whole nation. Ger- 
many, deriving new vigour as she did from the events 
of 1866 and 1870, has devoted all her strength to the 
enlargement of her own national life. Every time the 
national powers of France were fortified she proceeded 

85 



Imperial Germany 

to acts of aggression abroad, and would do so again 
if she foresaw the likelihood of success. 

We had to take this into account, and consider that 
we ourselves should be the opponent against whom 
France would first turn, if she thought that she could 
carry out a victorious campaign against Germany. 
[Anyone who makes a serious study of politics must 
not yield to the transitory impressions of the moment, 
but must remember the past and forecast the future. 
We have shown that we are superior to France from 
the military and economic standpoint, that as a race 
we have more vigour and greater powers of organisa- 
tion. But we must not seek to hide from ourselves 
the fact that French hostility will be very materially 
increased by the war. In the winter, 1914-15, a man 
who is thoroughly conversant with French feelings and 
conditions wrote: "The feeling in France against us 
during the Franco-German War, 1870-71, bears the 
same relation to their feelings to-day as a smoking 
factory chimney does to an eruption of Vesuvius." The 
Minister of Education, Albert Sarrant, to quote one of 
many instances, on the occasion of a prize-giving at 
the Lycee Condorcet in the summer of 19 15, exhorted 
the young generation in France never to forget and 
never to forgive the injury that Germany was doing 
France : "Si jamais un Frangais essay erait de Vouhlier, 
que sa conscience en revolte lui refuse la paix des jours 
et le repos des nuits," ^ It would be a mistake to imagine 
that the Radicals do not share this feeling. As soon 

' If ever a Frenchman should try to forget, may he be so tor- 
mented by the pricks of his conscience that he has neithei peace by 
day nor rest by night. 

86 



The French Revenge 

as war actually broke out they returned to the chauvin- 
istic traditious of the Jacobins; even M. Gustave 
Herve, who had been imprisoned before the war be- 
cause he said that the dung-heap was the proper place 
for the French tricolore.] The policy of revenge is sup- 
ported by the unshakable belief of the French in the 
indestructibility of the vital power of France. This 
belief is based on all the experiences of French history. 
No nation has ever recovered so quickly as the French 
from the effects of national disasters; none have ever 
so easily regained their elasticity, their self-confidence 
and their energy, after grievous disappointments and 
apparently crushing defeats. More than once France 
appeared to be finally overcome by her enemies abroad, 
and so shattered by chaotic conditions at home, that 
Europe believed she had ceased to be dangerous. But 
always within a very short time the French nation 
confronted Europe in all its old strength, or even with 
added might, and was able again to take up the struggle 
for European supremacy, to threaten the balance of 
power once more. 

The rise and fall of this nation has always aston- 
ished the States of Europe anew. The gradual decline 
from the proud height to which Louis XIV. had raised 
France seemed to have led to the disintegration of 
the French State by the great Revolution, which was 
quickly followed by civil war, the disbandment of the 
army, the destruction of the old industrial prosperity, 
and the bankruptcy of the State. Ten years after the 
outbreak of the Revolution the armies of the French 
Republic were masters of Italy, the Netherlands, and 
all the land west of the Rhine, and had penetrated 

87 



Imperial Germany 

victoriously into the heart of Germany; another ten 
years, and the First Empire was at the height of its 
glory and Napoleon seemed very near the attainment 
of his goal — dominion over the whole Continent. Then 
followed the disasters of Leipzig and Waterloo, the 
complete defeat of France, and twice in succession 
the taking of her capital. 

During more than twenty years of uninterrupted 
warfare the French nation had drained to the dregs 
its industrial and physical resources; and yet under 
the Second Empire France was able once more to rise 
to the foremost position. The consequences of the 
defeat of 1870 dealt France a more grievous blow than 
any previously. [But this war has proved that it] did 
not prevent this wonderfully elastic nation from rising 
yet again. What Alexis de Tocqueville said more 
than half a century ago about the French people in his 
classical work, "L'Ancien Regime et la Revolution,** 
is in many respects still true to-day : 

" Quand je considere cette nation en elle-meme, je la 
trouve plus extraordinaire qu*aucun des evenements de 
son histoire. En a-t-il jamais paru sur la terre une 
seule qui fut si remplie de contrastes et si extreme en 
chacun de ses actes, plus conduite par des sensations 
moins par des principes; faisant ainsi toujours plus 
mat ou mieux qu'on ne s'y attendait, tantot au-dessous 
du niveau commun de Vhumanite, tantot fort au-des- 
sus; un peuple tellement inalterable dans ses princi- 
paux instincts qu*on le reconnait encore dans des 
portraits qui ont ete faits de lui il y a deux ou trois 
mille ans, et en meme temps tellement mobile dans 
ses pensees journalieres et dans ses gouts qu'il finit 

88 



A People of Contrasts 

par se devenir un spectacle inattendu a lui-meme, 
et demeure souvent aussi surpris que les etrangers a 
la vue de ce qu*il vient de faire; le plus casanier et 
le plus routinier de tous quand on V ahandonne a lui- 
meme, et lorsqu'une fois on Va arrache malgre lui 
a son logis et a ses habitudes, pret a pousser 
jusqu'au bout du monde et a tout oser; indocile 
par temperament, et s'accommodant mieux toutefois de 
V empire arbitraire et meme violent d*un prince que 
du gouvernement regulier et libre des principaux 
citoyens; aujourd'hui Vennemi declare de toute obeis- 
sance, demain mettant a servir une sorte de passion 
que les nations les mieux douees pour la servitude ne 
peuvent atteindre ; conduit par un fil tant que personne 
ne resiste, ingouvernable des que Vexemple de la resis- 
tance est donne quelque part; trompant toujours ainsi 
ses mattres, qui le craignent ou trop ou trop peu; 
jamais si libre qu'il faille desesperer de Vasservir, ni si 
asservi qu*il ne puisse encore briser le joug; apte a 
tout, mais n'excellant que dans la guerre; adorateur 
du hasard, de la force, du succes, de V eclat et du bruit, 
plus que de la vraie gloire ; plus capable d*hero'isme 
que de vertu, de genie que de bon sens, propre a con- 
cevoir d'immenses desseins plutot qu'a parachever de 
grandes entreprises ; la plus brillante et la plus dange- 
reuse des nations de VEurope, et la mieux faite pour y 
devenir tour a tour un objet d* admiration, de haine, 
pe pitie, de terreur, mais jamais d' indifference? '* ^ 

' " When I contemplate this nation itself, it strikes me as more 
extraordinary than any of the events in its history. Was there ever 
in this world a people so full of contrasts, so extreme in each one 
of its actions, more guided by emotions and less by principles? Thus 
always doing better or worse than was expected, at one time below 

89 



Imperial Germany 

It is a fact that very soon after the re-establishment 
of her political system, which, as after every military 
disaster, had been overthrown as a result of the defeats 
of Worth and Sedan, France, whose activity in the field 
of continental politics had been paralysed for the time 
being, exerted her power with much effect in the sphere 
of world-politics. In the course of the last twenty-five 
years she has founded a colonial empire that much more 
than compensates her for the loss of land and population 
she suffered in Europe, and has thus raised herself to 
the position of the second greatest colonial Power in the 
world. Her possessions in North Africa, which lie at 

the common level of humanity, at another far above it; a people so 
stable in their principal instincts that they are still recognisable in 
portraits that were drawn two or three thousand years ago, and at 
the same time so changeable in their daily thoughts and in their 
tastes, that they themselves are finally astonished at the spectacle 
they present, and are often as surprised as foreigners at the sight of 
what they have just done; the most stay-at-home creatures of habit 
when left to themselves, but once they have been forced, against their 
will, to abandon their accustomed dwellings and uses, ready to go 
to the ends of the earth, and to dare anything ; intractable by 
nature, and nevertheless submitting with a better grace to the 
arbitrary and even brutal rule of a prince, than to the orderly and 
free government of the principal citizens; one day the avowed enemy 
of all obedience, the next day serving with such a passionate 
devotion as even the nations most prone to servitude cannot attain; 
people who can be guided by a thread as long as no one resists, but 
who become ungovernable as soon as the example to resist is given 
anywhere ; thus always deceiving their masters who fear them either 
too little or too much ; never so free that it is hopeless to try and 
subjugate them, nor so utterly enslaved that they cannot throw ofiE the 
yoke ; qualified for anything, but excelling only in war ; worshipping 
chance, force, success, show and clamour, rather than true glory; 
more capable of heroism than of virtue, of genius than of common 
sense, better able to conceive immense schemes than to consummate 
great undertakings; the most brilliant and the most dangerous of the 
nations of Europe, and the most apt to become in turn an object of 
admiration, hatred, pity and terror, but never one of indifference." 

90 



U 



French Enterprise 

her very gates, have been nearly doubled by the acquisi- 
tion of Morocco. 

This is not the place to discuss whether, as many 
think, the complete and unlimited control of Morocco 
in political, industrial and military matters will be a 
source of weakness, or whether it will not rather lend 
added strength to France. In any case, the colonial 
activity of France proves how quickly and vigorously 
the French spirit of enterprise revived soon after the 
defeat of 1870, and attempted to win national ascend- 
ancy in the path which lay open, and which Germany 
had designedly left open in Tunis and in Tonquin. 

But France will not look upon the greatest colonial 
empire as a sufficient compensation for the loss of 
Alsace-Lorraine. And Bismarck had no illusions on 
this point when he recommended us to promote the 
success of France's colonial policy in order to distract 
the attention of the French, at any rate temporarily, 
from the Vosges. / 



9» 



CHAPTER VII 

MOROCCO — AND AFTER 

When we fell out with France on the Morocco ques- 
tion, it was not our object to thwart her colonial policy, 
but we had weighty interests of our own as well as 
our national reputation to defend. Our action in the 
Moroccan affair had its legal justification in the Treaty 
of Madrid of 1880, and the German-Moroccan Com- 
mercial Treaty of 1890. We were driven to take such 
action by the high-handed policy of France in Morocco, 
which threatened to ignore German industrial and com- 
mercial interests as well as our national credit. 

The Moroccan Treaty, concluded in Madrid in 1880, 
had defined the European Powers* right to exercise 
protection over Morocco. It was concluded on the 
basis of the recognition of the sovereign rights of 
Morocco. On the strength of this basis Germany con- 
cluded a commercial treaty with Morocco in 1890. No 
change in the arrangements made at Madrid was valid 
without the assent of the signatory Powers — namely, 
the Great Powers of Europe with the exception of 
Russia, the United States, the Scandinavian States, 
Holland, Belgium and Portugal. France certainly had 
a special interest in the development of affairs in 
Morocco, which adjoins one of her own colonial pos- 
sessions. This fact was always taken into account by 
Germany. On the basis of the arrangements made at 

92 



A New Situation 

Madrid, no objection could have been taken to the 
special consideration of the particular interests of France 
and Spain. [But a new situation arose when France, in 
her efforts to achieve the realisation of more far-reaching 
plans in Morocco, with intentional want of considera- 
tion, utterly disregarded the Treaty of Madrid of 1880 
as well as the Commercial Treaty of 1890 between Ger- 
many and Morocco. On April 8, 1904, a separate treaty 
was made between England and France by which a 
settlement of many long-standing points of difference 
on colonial matters was reached. In this treaty France 
declared that she would not demand that England should 
evacuate Egypt, while England acknowledged France's 
right as a neighbouring State of Morocco, to maintain 
order there, and, if need be, to render the Sultan both 
military and financial assistance in his administrative 
reforms. There was no occasion to interfere with that 
part of the treaty which dealt with Egypt. By such inter- 
vention we should have still further complicated our 
relations with England, which at the time were difficult 
enough ; moreover, Prince Bismarck had been of opinion 
that Germany should certainly not make difficulties for 
England in Egypt. "In Egypt," the Prince used to 
say, "we are English; in Serbia, Austrian; in Bulgaria, 
Russian." 

So far as Morocco was concerned, France had de- 
finitely promised in the treaty of April 4, 1904, that she 
would not alter the political status of the country. For 
this reason, if for no other, it seemed indicated to wait 
first and see whether France would fulfil this promise, 
how she would put the treaty into practice, and in 
particular what attitude she would assume toward our 

93 



Imperial Germany 

treaty rights in Morocco and the German interests 
there. Apart from this, it depends on circumstances 
and is a question of opportunity when an action should 
be begun there. 

There were many grounds for not greeting this 
Anglo-French treaty with immediate threats, or regard- 
ing it with particular nervousness. It seemed best not to 
confound the Egyptian question with the Moroccan one, 
and also not, a priori, to show ill-will and distrust to 
France in the Moroccan question. That gave us a better 
right to object if any infringement of the existing legal 
conditions or any injury to our economic interests 
occurred, should it appear that France did not intend 
to respect them. This was soon to be proved.] France 
interfered more and more unscrupulously in Moroccan 
affairs. She hoped by ignoring the Treaty of Madrid, 
and disregarding the economic interests of other coun- 
tries, especially those of Germany, quietly to acquire a 
large new colonial possession of great value. In the 
pursuit of this policy France relied on England, assum- 
ing that the support and countenance of that country 
was sufficient to enable her to attain her ends. 

[The French Government tried to give to the 
Anglo-French Treaty a sharp point directed against 
Germany, by arrogantly disposing] of a great and 
most important field of colonial interests, without 
even deigning to take the German Empire into con- 
sideration. It was clearly an attempt on the part 
of the Western Powers to claim the sole right 
of decision in matters of world policy. The 
French authorities did not hesitate to act immedi- 
ately upon the Anglo-French arrangement, as if 

94 



Tunification of Morocco 

the signatory Powers of the Treaty of Madrid had no 
existence at all. France set about the "Tunification" 
of Morocco. The French agent in Morocco, St. R^n6- 
Taillandier, tried to secure a share in the government 
of the country. By altering the police organisation, by 
founding a national bank under French direction, and 
by entrusting public works and contracts to French 
firms, the industrial life and government in Morocco 
were to be brought under French influence to such an 
extent that the ultimate annexation of Morocco as a 
French possession would have been merely a matter of 
form. 

The Minister for Foreign Affairs at that time — 
Delcasse, a most gifted and energetic statesman, but 
too easily swayed by his feelings where Germany was 
concerned — cherished the hope of confronting us with 
a fait accompli in Morocco. He knew that in so doing 
he would deal our prestige in the world a severe blow. 
[He refused to consider any arrangement with Germany ; 
partly because he was filled with an even more ardent 
desire for revenge than most other Frenchmen who 
played an active part in politics; partly, too, because 
he believed that France, owing to the fact that her 
increase in population was so very much less than 
that of Germany, would gradually fall into a position 
of dependence if she attached herself to Germany. We 
had important and promising economic interests in 
Morocco which w^ere seriously compromised by this 
shutting of the open door. There was a fairly wide- 
spread belief in Germany that France would meet with 
difficulties and hindrances in Morocco which would 
paralyse her military, financial and political striking 

95 



Imperial Germany 

power in Europe; but this theory would not hold water. 
Since such progress has been made in the manufacture 
of arms, the time has passed when any prolonged resist- 
ance to the advance of civilised nations could be made 
by semi-barbarians, whether they were Berbers, Arabs, 
Persians or Annamites. It was much more probable that 
France would in course of time considerably reinforce 
her "black troops," her army of native Africans, by 
forming new companies and squadrons from the pro- 
mising material offered by Morocco.] In addition to 
this, our dignity and our newly-won position in inter- 
national politics were at stake. The fact that the 
signatory Powers of the Treaty of Madrid had been 
ignored in the Anglo-French Moroccan arrangement 
was equivalent in specie to an affront to the German 
Empire. France had made a friendly treaty with 
England, secret negotiations were being carried on 
with Spain, Russia was not a signatory Power, Italy 
went her own way in the Mediterranean, the affairs of 
Morocco were of little interest to the United States, 
and there was no reason to expect serious opposition 
from the smaller States of Europe. 

Thus only Austria and, above all, Germany were 
clearly set aside. A weighty choice lay before us. 
Should we allow ourselves to be left out, and 
treated as a quantite negUgeahle, in an important 
international decision ? Or should we demand 
that our interests be considered and our wishes 
consulted? The first course would have been the 
easier; we were urged to adopt the second, not only 
by our sense of honour and our pride, but also by our 
interests, rightly interpreted. If once we suffered our- 

96 



Emperor William at Tangier 

selves to be trampled on with impunity, this first attempt 
to treat us badly would soon have been followed by a 
second and a third. 

On July 3, 1900, the Emperor William II. had given 
utterance to the words : " I am not of opinion that our 
German people, under the leadership of their princes, 
conquered and suffered thirty years ago in order to be 
set aside in important decisions on foreign affairs. If 
this should happen, the German nation's position as 
a World Power would be destroyed for good and all, 
and I do not intend this to come to pass." French 
Moroccan policy was an obvious attempt to set Ger- 
many aside in an important decision on foreign affairs, 
an attempt to adjust the balance of power in Europe 
in favour of France. A precedent would have been 
established which must of necessity have tempted to 
repetition. We could not risk that. From this point 
of view the Moroccan affair became a national question 
for us. The course of our policy in Morocco was clearly 
indicated. 

On March 31, 1905, His Majesty the Emperor, in 
pursuance of my advice, landed at Tangier, where he 
defended the independence and sovereignty of Morocco 
in unequivocal language. The demands of Germany to 
be consulted about Moroccan affairs were thus an- 
nounced to the world. It was made clear that Germany 
intended to adhere to the international treaty of 1880, 
based on the acknowledgment of the sovereignty of 
Morocco, and that she was not inclined to recognise the 
new situation created without her consent by the Anglo- 
French Moroccan Treaty and the action of France in 
that country. 

H 97 



Imperial Germany 

Our object in this was to substitute an inter- 
national settlement by the signatory Powers of the 
Treaty of Madrid for the one-sided arrangement be- 
tween England and France. We also had to prevent 
an international conference from simply giving its con- 
sent to French policy in Morocco. Both ends were 
attained by the fact that the Conference of Algeciras 
actually took place, and by the decisions it made. 
France violently opposed the scheme of calling a con- 
ference. For a time it seemed as if M. Delcasse would 
make the question of peace or war depend on this point. 
When the German Government refused to yield, France 
consented to the conference. M. Delcasse resigned the 
portfolio of Foreign Affairs. He retired, and we got 
our way. [The retirement of M. Delcasse proved to be 
no transitory triumph for us. His fall weakened 
French chauvinism, and more prudent and peaceful 
counsels prevailed again in France, thereby facilitating 
our policy as well as the building of our fleet. M. 
Delcasse was the instrument by which, our enemies 
hoped to strike us. As Carl Peters rightly said, those 
circles in England which did not wish us to carry out 
our naval programme thought by Delcasse 's help to 
inveigle France into an offensive alliance with England, 
so that they could attack us with the British fleet. It 
was of the utmost importance that they should be de- 
prived of this weapon at that particular moment, when 
we had completed about half of our naval programme.] 

In Algeciras our position was naturally a difficult 
one, seeing that we were opposed to the entente Powers, 
and that the other Powers took little interest in 
the Moroccan question. Nevertheless, while preserv- 

98 



The Open Door in Morocco 

ing the sovereignty of the Sultan, we succeeded in 
securing international control of the police organisation 
and the Moroccan National Bank, thus ensuring the 
open door in Morocco for German economic interests as 
well as for those of all other countries. We did not attain 
all we wished, but at least all that was essential. We had 
foiled the attempt to set us aside in the settlement of an 
affair of great international importance. [Not only had 
we successfully defended commercial liberty in Morocco, 
but we had proved that we could not be pushed aside, 
even by a coalition of other Powers.] We should have 
a voice in the further development of Moroccan affairs, 
and we did not need to renounce our right to this with- 
out adequate compensation. The decisions of the Alge- 
ciras Conference bolted the door against the attempts 
of France to compass the "Tunification" of Morocco. 
They also provided a bell we could ring at any time 
should France show any similar tendencies again. Very 
soon after the Algeciras Conference the new state of 
affairs made itself felt in a painful manner in France. 
The "nefarious Algeciras document" was characterised 
as "European tutelage forced upon France," or at best 
as an "honourable retreat." [The Revue des Deux 
Mondes declared that by the Algeciras document far 
more duties were imposed on France than rights were 
conceded to her. " On a vu nulle part une souve- 
rainete aussi garottee par des liens multiples et 
assujettie a de si nombreuses et si minutieuses 
servitudes, . . . Les puissances ou plutot la principale 
entre elles, VAllcmagne, ont consenti a ce que nous 
etablissions notre protectorat au Maroc, a la condition 
de n'y jouir d'aucun avantage economique. On a donne 

99 



Imperial Germany 

une extension tout-d-fait inusitee a la formule bien 
connue de la porte ouverte, , . , La France, c'est triste 
a dire, n'a obtenu aucune prime de gestion au MarocJ^ ^] 
It has been said that after Delcass^ resigned we 
ought to have tried to come to a direct understand- 
ing with France. It is a question whether France was 
at all inclined to pay Us an acceptable price. Any way, 
it was not open to us to pursue this course, if only on 
account of our position with regard to Turkey and 
Islam. In November, 1898, the Emperor William II. 
had said in Damascus: "The three hundred million 
Mohammedans who live scattered over the globe may 
be assured of this, that the German Emperor will be 
their friend at all times.'* In Tangier the Emperor had 
declared emphatically in favour of the integrity of 
Morocco. We should have completely destroyed our 
credit in the Mohammedan world, if so soon after these 
declarations we had sold Morocco to the French. Our 
Ambassador in Constantinople, Freiherr von Marschall, 
[who had rendered us extraordinarily good services by 
improving our relations with the Sublime Porte and with 
Islam,] said to me at the time : "If we sacrifice Morocco 
in spite of Damascus and Tangier, we shall at one 
swoop lose our position in Turkey, and with it all the 
advantages and prospects that we have painfully 
acquired by the labour of many years." 

' Nowhere has sovereignty been hampered by ^uch multifarious 
restrictions or subjected to such numerous and detailed humiliations. 
. . . The powers, or rather the principal power among them, to wit 
Germany, have consented to let ua establish a protectorate in Morocco 
on condition that no economic advantage shall accrue to us thereby. 
An altogether unheard-of latitude was given to the interpretation of 
the well-known formula of the open door. . . . Sad to say, France has 
secured no premium for her work of administration in Morocco. 

100 



The 1911 Arrangement 

The separate Franco-German Treaty of February 9, 
1909, which was concluded with the distinguished assist- 
ance of von Kiderlen-Wachter, later Secretary of State, 
diminished the likelihood of continual friction between 
the two countries. It secured France a certain amount 
of political influence without making annexation pos- 
sible ; but it retained the principle of the open door, and 
it afforded German and French commerce and industry 
equal rights in the State of Morocco, which preserved 
its independence without loss of territory. The arrange- 
ment promoted peace in that it supplemented the Alge- 
ciras settlement in such points as had proved in practice 
to require correction. [The co-operation of German and 
French merchants was to be brought about by means 
of German participation in economic and financial 
matters, whereby both parties would profit. The 
arrangement of 1909 was a purely business arrange- 
ment, and might have put an end to the Moroccan 
difference, supposing always that France was sensible 
and moderate in the exercise of the political influ- 
ence which had been conceded to her in Morocco.] 
The decisions of the Algeciras Conference were 
explicitly confirmed by the treaty of 1909. The 
German right to a voice in decisions touching the 
fate of Morocco, this right which stood in the way 
of the annexation of the country by France, was 
in no way affected by the separate treaty. What we 
received in 191 1 in return for renouncing this right — 
whether it be much or little, whether the piece of land 
in the Congo that fell to our share be of great value 
or small — was certainly obtained on the basis of the 
Algeciras decisions, and thanks to our action in the year 

lOI 



Imperial Germany 

1905. [Even during the present war a French pamphlet 
speaks of the '^portion de noire Congo Frangais que 
VAllemagne nous a extorquee en echange de Vhypotheque 
morale qu'elle avail mise insolemment sur le Maroc,"^] 
We never had any intention of taking possession of any 
part of Morocco ; not because we were afraid of France, 
but for our own sake. England and Spain, besides 
France, would have opposed us there. On the other 
hand, we could not hope to reconcile France by exag- 
geratedly friendly advances in the Moroccan question. 
[Rather, the Congo-Moroccan treaty, which connoted a 
renunciation on our part of the rights acquired at Alge- 
ciras and assured by the treaty of 1909, proved to be the 
starting-point of that '' esprit nouveau " which arose in 
191 1 and considerably increased French chauvinism and 
consequently their desire to take action. 

The Italian Tripoli expedition, too, really had its 
foundation in the Congo-Moroccan treaty. When it be- 
came known in Rome that the incorporation of Morocco 
in France's colonial possessions was sure to occur, the 
Marquis San Giuliano, at that time Minister for Foreign 
Affairs, said to his secretaries, drawing out his watch 
as he spoke, "Note this hour and this date. To-day 
has decided that we go to Tripoli. We cannot do other- 
wise, unless we care to miss the last possible opportunity 
of taking possession of Tripoli." The Tripoli expedi- 
tion in turn was the cause of the first Balkan War which 
dealt the Turkish Empire a severe blow, and, moreover, 
had the most far-reaching consequences in European 

* A poTtion of our French Congo which the Germans extorted 
from us in exchange for the sort of moral mortgage she had insolently 
put upon Morocco. 

loa 



Ultimate Aim of French Policy 

politics. The Marquis San Giuliano and Signer Gio- 
litti, who at that time directed Italian policy, did not 
intend the Tripoli expedition to have this effect, but, as 
so often in politics, their action had far more widespread 
results than they had originally desired.] However high 
may be the economic value of Morocco to France, 
however great the increase of power which she expects 
from this addition to her North African possessions, her 
Moroccan policy was — especially at critical moments — 
rather a means to an end than an end in itself. In 
certain French circles the original object was to ignore 
Germany, and thus, with the help of England, to make 
an effective attack on our position and credit in the 
world; later on they thought they saw a chance, with 
the support of England, to come to a final settlement 
with Germany under most favourable conditions. These 
tendencies of French policy twice brought the Moroccan 
question into the van of international politics and en- 
dangered the peace of the world. 

[At a time when no one in Germany dreamt of the 
outbreak of a world war, I aroused a certain amount of 
dissent in the country by writing in my discussion of 
"Deutsche Politik unter Kaiser Wilhelm II." (German 
Policy under the Emperor William II.) •] "When we 
consider our relations with France, we must not forget 
that she is unreconciled. So far as man can tell, the 
ultimate aim of French policy for many years to come 
will be to create the necessary conditions, which to-day 
are still wanting, for a settlement with Germany with 
good prospects of success. If we soberly realise this 
truth, we shall be able to adopt a proper attitude to- 
wards France. Indignant tirades against the incorrigi- 

103 



\ 



Imperial Germany 

bility of the French are in very bad taste, as are futile 
attempts to propitiate them. The German * Michel * 
has no need again and again to approach the coy beauty 
with flowers in his hand, and at times with a rather 
awkward bow ; her gaze is riveted on the Vosges. Only 
a slow recognition of the irrevocability of the loss 
of 1 87 1 can accustom France finally and without 
restriction to the state of affairs fixed in the Peace of 
Frankfurt. It is not impossible that the effect of 
convulsively straining her military resources to the utter- 
most may, by reacting on the economic and social con- 
ditions of France, hasten the return of pacific feelings, 
and that once again the French proverb may prove true, 
' Que Vexces du mal amene la guerison.'^ The reintro- 
duction of military service for a period of three years 
betokens such a rise in the * armament fever,' that it 
may lead to the return of a normal temperature. Should 
the three-year military service entail an income tax, this 
would also probably have a sobering effect. 

"Till such time France will be against us. Although 
she is at great pains to remedy the military disadvan- 
tage at which she stands in comparison with our State, 
and which is due to her smaller population, she no 
longer has the old-time confidence in her own strength 
alone. It is the aim of French policy, by means 
of alliances and friendships, to restore the balance 
between France and her German neighbour, or even, 
if possible, to turn the scales in her own favour. To 
this end France has had to renounce a part of her own 
free initiative, and has become more dependent than 
formerly on foreign Powers. The French, of course, 

* The very excess of the evil brings about a cure. 

104 



French Attitude in the Boer War 

are very well aware of this. The fact that the hyper- 
sensitive national pride of the French acquiesces in 
this state shows what is the predominant desire of the 
people. 

**When, shortly after the Kriiger telegram, enthu- 
siasm for the Boers ran high in France, as in all Europe, 
an English Minister anxiously asked a French diplomat 
whether France might not be tempted to side with Ger- 
many. The Frenchman's answer ran as follows : * You 
may rest assured that as long as Alsace-Lorraine re- 
mains German, whatever else may happen, the French 
nation will consider Germany its permanent enemy, and 
will regard any other Power merely as an accidental 
opponent. It is hardly possible to imagine any inter- 
national situation which could induce France to change 
fundamentally the policy inspired by the memory of 
1870." 

[I think that the events of the last years have con- 
firmed my diagnosis.] The course and the result of the 
quarrel about Fashoda showed how little success or 
failure in the wider world count in the estimation of 
France, when compared with her loss of position in 
Europe. France suffered an undeniable defeat in this 
quarrel with England, and this was keenly felt. Fashoda 
stood for the end of an old and proud dream of French 
colonial policy, and made the French nation feel the 
superiority of British power in a pitiless fashion. 

For a moment public opinion in France was en- 
raged and turned impetuously against England. The 
bulk of those people who in politics cannot distinguish 
between the transitory and the permanent, and mis- 
take the noisy din of actuality for the echo of what is 

105 



Imperial Germany 

really significant, thought that a change had come over 
French policy. The ill-feeling against England was to 
drive France to the side of Germany, the disappoint- 
ment about their ill-success in the Sudan was to paralyse 
resentment at the loss of Alsace-Lorraine, and new 
hope of requital for Fashoda was to take the place of 
the old hope of revenge for Metz and Sedan. It was 
impossible to misunderstand the nature of French policy 
more thoroughly than by imagining such a state of 
affairs. A nation that for a whole generation has 
cherished one hope and one ideal will not turn aside 
from its old course because of a misadventure on a 
remote track. The hatred of Germany could not be 
affected, let alone removed, by ill-feeling against Eng- 
land. Even if the momentary anger against England 
had been far more passionate and heartfelt than it 
actually was, it would, nevertheless, not have been the 
beginning of permanently hostile feelings, for the atti- 
tude of France to England had been definitely estab- 
lished in French policy before the trouble in the Sudan. 
France soon discovered in English jealousy of Ger- 
many her natural ally against the victor of 1870, and 
pressed to England's side. There was disappointment 
in Paris because England would not, for the sake of 
French friendship, sacrifice any of her interests in the 
Sudan and on the Nile, but France was ready in any 
case, though with clenched teeth, to pay this price, or 
even a higher one, for England's friendship. The 
defeat in the Fashoda affair was set down in the debit 
account of the French policy of revenge, and finally 
resulted in renewed hatred of Germany rather than in 
hostility towards England. Forty-eight hours after 

106 



The Anglo-French Entente 

France had yielded in the Fashoda affair, a French am- 
bassador, one of the best political intellects in France, 
was asked by an Italian colleague what effect this event 
would have on French relations with England. The 
Frenchman replied: "An excellent one! Once the dif- 
ference about the Sudan is settled nothing stands in 
the way of a complete entente with England." 

This entente really became an accomplished fact not 
long after the Fashoda incident, and has persisted 
through all the changes of international politics. Owing 
to her alliance with France, and the complications in the 
East, Russia has often supported the Anglo-French 
entente, so that we are justified in speaking of a Triple 
entente as a counterpart to the Triple Alliance. [How- 
ever, it was not till the outbreak of war that the Triple 
entente became a solid coalition. As late as April 24, 
1914, Baron Beyens, the Belgian Minister in Berlin, 
stated in connection with the rumour that the Russian 
Ambassador in Paris, M. Iswolski, was to be transferred 
to London, that M. Iswolski would be able to convince 
himself there that public opinion in England had not 
the slightest desire to see England lose her freedom of 
action by a formal treaty which would bind her fate to 
that of Russia and France. It was the London Protocol 
of September 5, 19 14, that changed the hitherto more or 
less loose connection between the three Powers into a 
close alliance. But that does not mean that the con- 
flicting interests among our opponents have for ever 
been done away with. The solidarity which the war has 
created between England and Russia, France and Eng- 
land, Russia and Japan, this union which for the time 
being has been cemented by blood shed in a common 

107 



Imperial Germany 

cause, is contrary to the nature of things. In addition, 
there are also points of difference between America and 
Japan, Japan and the Australian Commonwealth, which 
this war alone has pushed into the background.] 

The political leadership of this triple union even 
before the war was, at decisive moments, mostly in the 
hands of England. English leadership has sometimes 
had a soothing and sobering effect on France, and has 
done good work for the preservation of peace in Europe. 
[But the outbreak and the course of the world war have 
shown how ready the leading circles in England were 
to throw their decisive influence on the policy of the 
entente, and to direct that influence steadfastly and de- 
liberately against their German rival as soon as they 
thought that peace could no longer be preserved. The 
consideration that, if the troublesome German com- 
petitor would only disappear from the face of the 
earth, or at least from world politics, England, accord- 
ing to the dictum of Montaigne, ^^ que le dommage de 
Vun est le profit de V autre," ^ could only profit, was a 
political dogma held by the majority of leading British 
politicians.] 

[But between the sentiments in England and the 
fundamental feeling in France towards us, there was a 
marked difference. Ever since the Frankfurt Treaty of 
Peace had been signed, France had been ready to attack 
us at any time when she thought she had sufficient forces 
and could count on a simultaneous Russian attack upon 
Germany. England was willing to do so only if she 
were convinced that her intervention in a war would 
weaken Germany politically and economically. The 

' That one man's loss is another man's gain. 
loS 



Clashing Interests 

mainspring of French policy toward us was a kind of 
mistaken national idealism; that of English policy, 
crude national egotism. He who coolly follows his in- 
terests will at the decisive moment master him who, side 
by side with him, pursues an idea. But time will show 
whether the English policy of interest was not wrong, 
because the past has never produced such a conflict of 
interests between England and Germany as to justify a 
struggle for existence.] 

Doubtless the English merchant has at times been 
irked by the competition abroad of his German col- 
league; doubtless German and English economic in- 
terests do clash here and there in the world. But in 
the course of her great world policy England has hardly 
found any Great Power bar her way less often than 
the German Empire. This fact did not escape the 
English, in spite of their anxiety about the German 
navy. Up to 1914 Germany and England were the only 
two great European Powers who had never shed a drop 
of each other's blood. There had been friction and 
tension between them, but never war. In England, too, 
there were people who realised that England, by con- 
tinually opposing Germany and by overdoing the anti- 
German policy, only injured herself, and who under- 
stood what excellent customers Germany and England 
are of each other, and how grievously British industrial 
life would feel the loss of German custom. If, on the 
one hand, there were many opposing interests in Ger- 
many and England, on the other they had very vital 
interests in common. And, in truth, the danger to Eng- 
lish supremacy at sea presented by the new world and 
sea power belonged only to the sphere of possibilities — 

109 



Imperial Germany 

or rather of imagination — and not to the realm of 
tangible realities. 

The attitude of England to Germany was really not 
comparable with that of France to us. Although, since 
we first trod the path of international politics, we had 
often found England opposed to us, yet, after we had 
attained the necessary power of defence at sea, our 
relations with England could have been genuine and 
friendly. [By the very building of our fleet we had 
removed the chief hindrance to co-operation between 
us and England upon a foundation of absolute parity 
and sound reciprocity. We had cleared the way for 
an understanding in every field of world politics, 
which should take the interests of both countries into 
consideration. The English ministers refused to recog- 
nise this, and did not want either the understanding or 
sensible co-operation. They must therefore not be 
surprised if, in consideration of our unfavourable coastal 
circumstances, we demand serious and solid guarantees 
to ensure our safety and our independence with regard 
to England. 

The volte-face of public opinion from a desire 
for peace to zeal for war has taken place slowly 
in England, as has been the case in former wars. 
England is wont to throw her whole weight into the 
scale gradually, not immediately nor all at once. The 
experience of history should have warned us to take 
this peculiarity of the English nation into account. In 
December, 1915, a neutral, who had visited England, 
stated in the Berliner Tagehlatt that at the beginning 
of the war many Englishmen had been of the opinion 
that England would have done better to remain neutral ; 

no 



What Mr. Asquith Said 

that after the outbreak of war and in the course of the 
same these views had entirely disappeared. That this 
was correct was shown by the speech which Lord Rose- 
bery, a most distinguished English statesman, made 
in Edinburgh at the beginning of January, 1916; he 
accused us of having started the world war "by a de- 
liberate and infamous conspiracy against the liberties 
of the world " ; furthermore, he, a former Prime Minis- 
ter, forgot himself so far as to characterise our friend- 
liness to England, German visits to England, all our 
attempts to achieve friendly relations with England, 
as "Judas kisses." A few weeks later the present Eng- 
lish Prime Minister, Mr. Asquith, answered a concilia- 
tory speech of the German Imperial Chancellor's in 
such acrimonious and insulting language as has hitherto 
never been used, even in war time, to a leading per- 
sonality in a country which but a short time before had 
been friendly.] 

Rightly recognising that peace and friendship be- 
tween Germany and England would be beneficial to both 
countries, the Emperor William II., since his accession 
to power, has worked spontaneously and with never- 
failing zeal to restore friendly relations between the 
two great Germanic nations. There were many 
fields in which both have parallel interests. In 
proportion as the conviction spread here and in Eng- 
land, that the national interests of both countries profited 
most by concerted action, the preliminary conditions for 
steadfast and honest trust and friendship could have 
gained ground. 

The fact that the danger of an armed conflict 
between England and Germany more than once 

III 



Imperial Germany 

seemed very imminent, by no means indicated that the 
struggle was only postponed and not terminated. It 
has often happened that diplomacy has seemed obliged 
to leave further explanations to armed force. But the very 
imminence of this critical moment has frequently sufficed 
to give a fresh impetus to negotiations which had come 
to a standstill, and to bring about a peaceful solution. 
War clouds are inevitable in the political sky. But the 
number of those that burst is far smaller than the num- 
ber of those that disappear. Heavy clouds threatened 
the peace between England and France in the 'forties 
of the last century, at the time of the July monarchy, 
and also during the Second Empire. [In his speech on 
February 6, 1888, Prince Bismarck showed that, with 
the exception of the comparatively short period when 
Europe, exhausted by the Napoleonic wars, enjoyed a 
somewhat deceptive tranquillity under the protection 
of the Holy Alliance, the danger of great conflagrations 
was always present.] All these threatening clouds melted 
away without bursting. [And when I review my per- 
sonal experiences, I remember that four years after the 
Peace of Frankfurt, when the ** War-in-sight " article 
appeared in the Post, Prince Bismarck was criticised 
in many quarters, because he would not realise that war 
with France was inevitable. After the Berlin Congress, 
and even more during the critical winter of 1887-88, 
Prince Bismarck was blamed because, in spite of the 
spread of the Pan-Slav movement in Russia, and in 
spite of extensive military preparations in that 
country, he endeavoured to preserve peace with Russia. 
Prince Bismarck remained unperturbed. Three times 
he made war, but much oftener he avoided wars which 

112 



splashing in Hypothetical Politics 

he did not desire. The naif conception, that war was 
an unavoidable natural phenomenon, like an earthquake 
or a deluge of rain, was utterly foreign to his ideas. 
In spite of the imminence of conflicts in 1875, 1878, 
and 1887-88, he preserved the peace. And, as a matter 
of fact, since those critical days we have lived at peace 
with France for thirty-nine years, with Russia for thirty- 
six and twenty-six years respectively. 

More than once in recent years I have heard it 
said that it would have been better if war had broken 
out over the Moroccan question in 1905, or over the 
annexation of Bosnia in 1909. It is easy to get beyond 
one's depth if one splashes about in the blue waves of 
the boundless ocean of hypothetical politics, as I once 
called them in the Reichstag. It is just as impossible 
to say now what would have happened if war had 
resulted from one or the other of the critical phases of 
the past, as it is impossible to tell for certain whether, 
if the general conflagration had not occurred in July, 
1914, we should nevertheless have had a world war 
later, or whether events might not have supervened 
which would have indefinitely postponed the danger of 
a general conflict. Only a few weeks before the out- 
break of war Baron Beyens, the Belgian Minister in 
Berlin, wrote to his government : ** In a few years 
equilibrium of forces between Germany and France will 
no longer be possible. Germany need only have 
patience, need only continue to develop her economic 
and financial power in peace, need only await the re- 
sults of her excess of births, and without opposition 
and without a struggle she will be the ruling Power in 
all Central Europe." This consideration alone shows 
I T13 



Imperial Germany 

how unfounded is the accusation of our enemies, that 
Germany wanted the war.] 

Our relations with England required particularly 
firm and steady handling. We desired amicable and 
even friendly relations with England, but we were not 
afraid of hostile ones. Official Germany and the nation 
itself had to model their behaviour accordingly. A 
policy of running after England would have been as 
pointless as a policy of offensiveness. For a long time 
our foreign policy was, to a certain extent, regulated 
by the question of armaments; it had to be carried on 
under abnormal conditions. After our fleet had been 
built the normal state of affairs was restored ; our arma- 
ments were at the service of our policy. The friendship 
as well as the enmity of the German Empire, supported 
by a strong navy, were naturally matters of very much 
greater importance to England than the friendship or 
enmity of Germany when she was unarmed at sea. 
[England would not have our friendship, and repeatedly 
refused to grasp the hand we offered her. She thought 
she would gain more from enmity to Germany. The 
history of England, who has always dealt most harshly 
with her vanquished foe in the few European wars in 
which she has taken part in modern times, gives us 
Germans an idea of the fate in store for us had we been 
defeated. Once embarked upon a war, England has 
always ruthlessly devoted all means at her disposal 
to its prosecution. English policy was always guided 
by what Gambetta called "la souverainete du but," 
England can only be got at by employing like decision 
and determination. The English character being what 
it is, since in the course of the world's history we are 

114 



Ruthlessness becomes Imperative 

now for the first time at war with England, our future 
depends upon our employing all our means and all our 
forces with equal ruthlessness, so as to secure the vic- 
tory and obtain a clear road. Since the German people, 
with unparalleled heroism, but also at the cost of fear- 
ful sacrifices, has waged war against half the world, it 
is our right and our duty to obtain safety and inde- 
pendence for ourselves at sea, and also really sufficient 
and, above all, practical, guarantees for the freedom of 
the seas and for the further fulfilment of our economic 
and political tasks throughout the world. The result 
of the great struggle in this particular respect will be 
decisive for the total result of the war and also for the 
judgment that will be passed upon it.] 



^^5 



CHAPTER VIII 

ACHIEVEMENTS OF GERMAN WORLD POLICY 

German policy, even before it had procured a strong 
navy, had been able to secure points of support which 
promised well for our world interests in the future. 
We developed and improved our old colonial posses- 
sions. [German colonial trade in 19 12 amounted to 
seven and a half times that in 1900.] The serious rising 
of the Hereros in South- West Africa was put down, 
thanks to the endurance and courage of our troops, 
though it was at great expense and at the cost of 
grievous sacrifices. The names of the brave men who 
fought and died in the African desert — I will only 
mention Count Wolff- Werner von Arnim and Freiherr 
Burkhard von Erffa, who both went out as volunteers, 
and met death heroically there — deserve to live in our 
history. [Their heroic bearing was an important indica- 
tion that our nation had not lost its military virtues 
during a long period of peace. May their blood not 
have been shed in vain ! And South- West Africa with 
its diamond mines, the oldest German colony, that great 
territory where, led by Prince Bismarck, Germany for 
the first time set foot upon African soil, may it return 
to our possession after the war ! 

The South-West African rising marked a crisis in 
our colonial policy, but also a change for the better. 
By reorganising the Colonial Administration, by trans- 

116 



The Landing in Kiao-chau 

forming the Colonial Department of the Foreign 
Ministry into an independent Imperial Ministry, and 
above all by arousing a lively comprehension of our 
tasks and aims in the colonies, we succeeded, at last, 
during the tenure of office of the Secretary of State, 
Herr Dernburg, in getting our colonial policy off the 
dead centre. It was just the same as with the navy. 
With great trouble, and after a long fight, we were at 
last lucky enough to convince all civil parties of the 
commonalty of the usefulness and necessity of a posi- 
tive colonial policy, and to gain their support for it. 
About the time when we began to build our fleet, [our 
landing in Kiao-chau took place, in the autumn of 1897, 
when I first held office as Secretary of State for Foreign 
Affairs. "It is from the year of Kiao-chau that the 
growth of the formidable German navy dates," wrote 
The Times in the course of the present war ; this paper 
has from the first followed the development of our sea 
power with eyes sharpened by envy. It was quite true 
that the fact that we established ourselves on the coast 
of China was directly and intimately connected with our 
naval programme, and was our first practical step along 
the path of world politics. A few weeks after this] we 
concluded the Shantung Treaty with China, which was 
one of the most significant actions in modern German 
history, and which secured for us a " place in the sun " 
in the Far East, on the shores of the Pacific Ocean, 
which have a great future before them. 

Up to the end of the nineteenth century Europe 
had been able to work only on the outskirts of China. 
Since then the interior has been opened up more and 
more. [After, by seizing Tsingtau, one of the most 

117 



Imperial Germany 

promising harbours on the Chinese coast, we had pro- 
vided ourselves with a firm basis which could not be 
improved upon, for our interests and plans, and by 
means of Shantung had secured an equally desirable door 
of entry, our policy in Eastern Asia aimed at obtaining 
recognition of equal rights for all nations in China. 
After the fall of Tsingtau, a German traveller, who had 
recently been in Asia, wrote in the Vienna Neue Freie 
Presse: "For Germany, struggling to gain a position 
in the world, Tsingtau was the most important of all 
her Eastern colonies; it was of great military conse- 
quence, the point of support of her commerce and her 
reputation in Asia, a material and moral result of her 
grand development. Thanks to the orderly enterprise of 
the Germans, from a hopeless desert there sprang one 
of the most beautiful foreign settlements; there arose a 
port which for practical excellence can compare with 
any harbour in Eastern Asia. With the loss of 
Tsingtau the hope of a brilliant future has been 
destroyed." 

Let us hope that through this war we have not lost 
for ever that great position in the Far East which we 
won by our action in China in 1897-98, which we effec- 
tually defended during the Boxer Rising, and which 
since then we have developed by patient, perspicacious 
and diligent work. After the conquest of Tsingtau by 
the Japanese, The Times opined that Kiao-chau grew 
more and more dangerous, as it waxed great in riches, 
commerce and power. The circumstances in which 
Germany had established herself there were a sad 
memory for England. The entente Powers and all 
neutrals who trade with China could now joyfully share 

118 



The Chinese Question 

in the rising commerce which had developed in the 
German port, and which was much more considerable 
than that of any other German possession. China 
would be glad to get back her old port "in a greatly 
improved condition." 

Thus The Times wrote scoffingly. But it is our 
duty to continue with firm determination to make the 
most of our interests in Eastern Asia on broad lines.] 
There is much to be gained by introducing industries 
into a huge Empire, with a population of four hundred 
million. [A fifth part of all mankind lives in China. 
It is one of the richest lands in the world, on account 
of its mineral wealth, iron and more especially coal, and 
of its waterways; it holds out extraordinary prospects 
for imports; it is the largest market in the world that 
has not yet been exploited.] We must not fall to the rear 
in this boundless field of action, [where before the war 
the German merchant achieved such fine successes by 
his bold enterprise and unwearied diligence.] 

The end of the Spanish-American War of 1899 gave 
us the opportunity to acquire the Caroline and Marianne 
Islands, and thus win a point of support in Polynesia. 
A year later we succeeded in bringing to an end the 
long quarrel over Samoa by a settlement with England 
and America that was to our advantage. [Both acquisi- 
tions, that of Samoa as well as that of the Caroline and 
Marianne groups, had been the subject of diplomatic 
efforts lasting for many years and going back to the very 
beginning of our Colonial policy. For that reason, if 
for no other, it is to be hoped that we have not finally 
lost those beautiful islands with which we associate 
many memories. Our friendly relations with the Spanish 

119 



Imperial Germany 

nation found expression in the understanding regarding 
the Caroline Islands; we have cultivated these relations 
to some purpose, for when we became involved in this 
war, we met with more sincere sympathy in Spain than 
in any other country that has taken no part in the war.] 

In 1898 we concluded a treaty with England, 
[respecting the exploitation of Portuguese colonies in 
Africa,] which was significant, not only because at a 
somewhat difficult stage our relations with England were 
made easier, without endangering our position with 
regard to other Powers, but also because we secured 
thereby valuable prospects for the future. This treaty 
held out hopes that results would be the more profit- 
able the more patiently we waited till the time should 
arrive to realise them ; it was brought about largely by 
the efforts of our ambassador in London, Count Paul 
Hatzfeldt, whom Bismarck used to call the best horse 
in his diplom.atic stables. 

The Bagdad railway scheme was a result of the 
Emperor's journey to Palestine in 1898, a very few 
months after the first Navy Bill was passed, and this 
was in every respect successful. It threw open to Ger- 
man influence and German enterprise a field of activity 
between the Mediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf, 
on the rivers Euphrates and Tigris, and along their 
banks, which can hardly be surpassed for fertility and for 
its great possibilities of development in the future. [The 
Bagdad railway has already proved to be of military 
value, for it enabled Turkey to send reinforcements to 
Mesopotamia in time to stop the English on their march 
to Bagdad, and to inflict sensible defeats upon them. 
After eighteen months the English have not yet suc- 

120 



The Future in Mesopotamia 

ceeded in entering Bagdad. " Ce tie sont pas seulement 
les forces turques operant en Mesopotamie qui se ravi- 
taillent par cette voie/' was the plaint of the Temps after 
the first English reverse at Kut-el-Amara, ''mats toute 
action turco-allemande en Perse repose sur cette com- 
munication, qui relie Constantinople a Ispahan," ^ The 
Bagdad railway also restores the route by which trade 
from Europe to India and from India to Europe once 
passed. By means of a rational irrigation of the districts 
through which it passes, this territory can once more 
be made the paradise it was in ancient times.] If one can 
speak of boundless prospects anywhere, it is in Meso- 
potamia, [not only on account of the Mesopotamian 
oilfields which for the most part lie near the Bagdad 
railway, but in every respect. 

The development of the resources of Mesopotamia 
is one of the great tasks of our future. I have 
worked long for the establishment of close political and 
commercial relations between us and Turkey, and I 
carried on the Bagdad railway enterprise with full con- 
sciousness of the immense prospects it opened out. 
But everyone, even those who, as I do, estimate our 
future possibilities in the East very highly, must realise 
that the Near South-East cannot replace all other 
markets for us. Before the war Turkey only took 
I per cent., Bulgaria 0.3 per cent., Greece 0.2 per 
cent., and Austria-Hungary a little more than 10 
per cent, of our exports, while 14.2 per cent, of 
German exports went direct to England, and of 

' Not only the Turkish forces operating in Mesopotamia are 
revictualled by this route, but the whole Turco-German action in 
Persia rests upon this line of communication which unites Con- 
stantinople with Ispahan. 

121 



Imperial Germany 

the 12.4 per cent, which went to Belgium and Hol- 
land, probably another 6 per cent, was destined for 
England. Before the war we were the country from 
which the Russians imported far and away the most ; our 
exports to Russia were three times as great as the Eng- 
lish and eight times as great as the French. Our ex- 
port to Italy before the war exceeded that of England 
by about 50,000,000 lire and that of France by more 
than 337,000,000 lire. Our export trade to France before 
the war was second only to that of England, and only 
to an inconsiderable extent, while it far surpassed that 
of any other country. We must cherish or possess no 
illusions on a subject like this, but must stick to 
realities. 

As in the case of the understanding with England 
in 1898 respecting the exploitation of the Portuguese 
colonies in Africa, so, before the outbreak of the present 
war, we carried on negotiations with England respect- 
ing the recognition of our interests and rights in the 
Bagdad railway which, it is to be hoped, will by the 
result of this war be secured to us in its whole extent 
from sea to sea.] 

The German Empire to-day has become a great 
World Power, not only by virtue of its industrial and 
commercial interests, but become a great World Power 
in the sense that its arm can reach to the farthest 
corners of the world. We built our navy as a means 
of national defence and to strengthen the measure of 
our national safety, and we never used it for any other 
purpose. 

The problem of modern German international poli- 
tics, to secure a foundation for our position as a Great 

122 



Accepted as a World Power 

Power, on the whole could be considered to be solved 
[one hundred years after the revolt of 1813, a quarter of 
a century after the accession to the throne of the 
Emperor William II.]. No doubt the German Empire 
was unwillingly accepted as a World Power by those 
States which for centuries had been used to settling 
questions of oversea politics alone. But our right to a 
voice in world matters was now recognised in every 
country where the German flag was seen. We had to 
reach this goal. It was of the same significance as the 
creation of our navy, and could only be attained by 
overcoming considerable difficulties both in the sphere 
of foreign, or international, and of home, or national, 
politics. 

During the first decade after the introduction of 
the Navy Bill of 1897, we had to pass through a zone 
of extreme danger in our foreign policy, for we were 
to provide ourselves with adequate sea power to pro- 
tect our interests effectually, without at the time 
having sufficient strength at sea to defend ourselves. 
Germany emerged from this critical period, unharmed 
and without loss of dignity or prestige. In the 
autumn of 1897 [a few weeks after I had assumed my 
duties in the Foreign Office], the Saturday Review pub- 
lished that famous article, which culminated in the 
statement that, if Germany were swept off the face of 
the earth to-morrow, there would be no Englishman the 
day after but would be the richer for it, and ended with 
the words : " Germaniam esse delendam" 

Twelve years later two important English news- 
papers, neither of them particularly pro-German, de- 
clared that the position of Germany was greater and 

123 



Imperial Germany 

stronger than at any time since the retirement of 
Prince Bismarck. From 1897 ^^ iQOQ a significant 
development had taken place that was not always 
realised by contemporaries, but that posterity will 
recognise and appreciate. During those years, by 
building our fleet, we successfully accomplished the 
transition to world politics. Our ascent into the regions 
of world politics was successful. We did not allow our- 
selves to be thrust forward by any Power against 
another, nor did we permit anyone to use us as a cat's- 
paw, [remembering the truth of the old saying that the 
independence of a State is a measure of its standing in 
the world, and that a great nation must seek its salva- 
tion not from others, but by itself.] By our calm bearing 
during the Boer War we took the first keen edge off the 
excitement which reigned in England after the Kriiger 
telegram ; and in the further course of events we gave 
England no cause to thwart us in the building of our 
fleet. On the other hand, while we carefully cultivated 
the Triple Alliance, we never came into actual conflict 
with the Dual Alliance, which would have hindered us 
in the gradual acquirement of a navy. What with the 
Anglo-French entente and the Dual Alliance, we had 
to follow a narrow path which grew even narrower when 
the former expanded into a Triple entente, and would 
have been impassable without extreme caution, when 
England by means of a network of alliances and ententes 
sought to isolate us. When at last, during the Bosnian 
crisis, the sky of international politics cleared, when 
German power on the Continent burst its encompassing 
bonds, we had already got beyond the stage of prepara- 
tion in the construction of our fleet. 

124 



Traits of National Character 

Besides the difRculties of foreign politics there were 
the difficulties of home politics, though the latter were 
easier to overcome. We Germans have not the gift of 
meeting the demands of a new era cheerfully and 
spontaneously. Goethe pointed to the heart of our 
strength but also of our weakness, when he said that it 
was characteristic of the Germans that they take every- 
thing heavily. The proverbial struggle between the 
old time and the new has suffered less interruption in 
the course of our history than in that of any other 
nation, and in every phase of any importance in our 
development it occurs again and again with undimin- 
ished strength. But, though amongst us innovations 
may have to encounter more vigorous opposition than 
elsewhere, yet in the end our development has never 
been impeded to such an extent as to cause lasting 
harm. We can even say that the uninterrupted con- 
tinuance of antagonistic criticism has saved us Ger- 
mans from dangerous innovations, and has brought 
us the steady ascent and sure progress in which we 
may rejoice to-day. That is what Bismarck meant 
when he said that rulers in Germany required the 
barbed wire of criticism, which kept them to the right 
path, because they ran the risk of tearing their hands to 
pieces if they engaged in movements that were too 
eccentric. Of course, Bismarck did not imply by this 
that criticism is always, or even mostly, in the right. 
But this spirit of negation forces men to show gravity, 
the strength of conviction, and the power of persua- 
sion, and to be really clear in their minds as to the 
necessity of treading new paths. Wherever in Ger- 
many it has been possible to convince the majority of 

125 



Imperial Germany 

the people, including those who were at first antagon- 
istic, of the necessity of a thing, we have found that this 
new conviction, though slowly acquired, has taken firm 
root. [Anxious avoidance and prolonged suppression of 
criticism have on the other hand always and everywhere 
done harm.] 

The idea of the necessity of having a navy has 
now become the common property of all Germans. 
From the most pronounced Agrarians among the 
Conservatives to the extreme wing of the Demo- 
cracy, there is no radical opposition to our German 
naval policy. The Ultra-Liberals, as is well known, 
had partly refused their support to the great, funda- 
mental Navy Bills. They really and truly represented 
the antagonism of the old era to the new. It 
was in the year 1900 that, after a long and excited 
session of the Budget Committee, the leader of the 
people *s party, Eugen Richter, came to me privately 
and remarked : " You will succeed, you will get a 
majority for your supplementary estimates for the 
Navy. I would never have believed it.*' In the inter- 
view that followed I was at pains to explain to this 
man, in many ways so distinguished, why his opposi- 
tion to the Navy Bill was inexplicable to me, for the 
German democracy had for decades demanded German 
efficiency at sea; Herwegh had sung the cradle song of 
the German fleet, and the first German warships had 
been built in 1848. I pointed out all the reasons why we 
must protect our commerce and our industries on the 
ocean. Richter listened attentively and said at last: 
"You may be right. But I am too old, I cannot take 
part in this new turn of affairs." The change prophe- 

126 



Bismarck and Herr Ballin 

sied by Eugen Richter was soon to be accomplished. 
The opposition of the people's party was based less on 
principle than on the general position of party politics. 
It was possible to overcome it in the course of party 
politics, and during the time of the Block it was over- 
come. 

Prince Bismarck, who was the successful opponent 
and great antithesis of the leader of the Progressives, 
bore striking and direct testimony to the recognition of 
the dawn of a new era. A few years after the Prince's 
retirement the excellent general director, Herr Ballin, 
suggested that he should have a look at the Hamburg 
harbour, which Bismarck, in spite of its nearness to 
Friedrichsruh, had not visited for a long time. After 
a tour round the harbour Herr Ballin took the eighty- 
year-old Prince on to one of the new transatlantic liners 
of the Hamburg-Amerika Company. Prince Bismarck 
had never yet seen a ship of such dimensions. He 
stopped when he set foot on the giant steamboat, looked 
at the ship for a long time, at the many steamers lying 
in the vicinity, at the docks and huge cranes, at the 
mighty picture presented by the harbour, and said at 
last : " I am stirred and moved. Yes, this is a new age 
— a new world." The mighty founder of the Empire, 
who fulfilled our national hopes and solved the problem 
of Germany's Continental policy, in his old age, with 
the never-failing insight of genius, recognised the 
future, the new tasks of the German Empire in the 
sphere of world politics. 

[The world war has stopped activity in the port of 
Hamburg and has caused the German commercial flag- 
to disappear from the seas. The victory of the German 

127 



Imperial Germany 

armies, which confirms Germany's poHtical hegemony 
on the Continent and must, as a resuh of final success, 
ensure it, will also give new life to German ports and 
reopen the path of the seas, making them free for all 
time, for the proud progress of German world policy.] 



128 



CHAPTER IX 

THE BEGINNINGS OF MILITARISM ^ 

The new German Empire, which in the course of 
phenomenally rapid progress developed world-wide 
commerce and industry, by means of its fleet secured 
a weapon of defence in the sphere of world 
politics. On the shoulders of her army Germany was 
borne upwards to that dizzy height whence the German 
people can direct their gaze upon the rest of the world. 

In the present world war we learn that the brunt of 
the battle, which is to decide Germany's place among 
the nations, falls primarily upon the German nation 
under arms; on the Western, Eastern and Southern 
fronts the people are fighting in the battalions, batteries 
and squadrons of the army. The weapon that Prussia 
forged in olden times and bequeathed as a heritage to 
the new German Empire, now affords the German 
people and German soil victorious protection from a 
world of foes. Once again the old adage proves true, 
that States are maintained by the forces to which they 
owe their greatness. 

The history of Brandenburg-Prussia, which achieved 
its first, but not its last, German triumph in founding 
the German Empire under Prussian leadership, is the 
history of the Prussian army; with its ups and downs 
it is the history of Prussia's varying fortunes in war. 

* New to this edition. 
J 129 



Imperial Germany 

It is due not to educational caprice, but to the logic of 
historical facts, that in the first instance the German 
schoolboy learns the main outlines of his country's his- 
tory as a history of war, the history of the gains achieved 
by victorious campaigns and of the stern and bitter 
consequences of lost battles. 

Therein lies the difference between the history of 
Prussia and that of all other modern States; a parallel 
to it can only be found in that of the old Republic of 
Rome. In the seventeenth century France was enabled 
to rise to the position of leading Power in Europe, 
thanks to the brilliant statesmanship of a Richelieu, 
and to the guidance of Mazarin, who had learnt 
his subtle and baffling diplomatic art from his fellow- 
countryman, Macchiavelli. In spite of sensible mili- 
tary reverses in the war of the Spanish Succession, 
she was able in the eighteenth century, after the bril- 
liant campaigns of Turenne and Cond^, to achieve a 
magnificent political and cultural eminence, without 
being seriously affected by the inglorious defeat of 
Rosbach. It was not until the great Revolution that 
France was forced into the stern military school to which 
the Prussian State had been accustomed for four gener- 
ations. 

Set apart from the European struggles that the two 
revolutions of the seventeenth century brought in their 
wake, England was able to disengage and prepare those 
forces which opened to her the path of world power, 
and in the eighteenth century she succeeded with slight 
rviilitary effort in vanquishing her French rival, whom 
tlie campaigns of Frederick the Great tied to the Con- 
tinental battlefield. 

130 



Austrian Affairs 

Peter the Great began, and his successors with their 
German advisers continued, the organisation of the 
immense forces of the peoples of Russia, and after 
the victory over Sweden this work was not appreci- 
ably affected by the success or failure of military 
enterprises. The battle of Zorndorf left next to no trace 
on Russian history; only when the drums of the wars 
of the Revolution drew Russia into the struggle for 
existence among the European Powers, did Russian 
history receive that military impress that it has borne 
ever since. 

When the Habsburg Monarchy entered upon the 
seventeenth century, it was in full possession of the 
hereditary, old German Imperial power which was 
firmly based upon the power of the Habsburg family. 
The fate of Austria was to be determined by the sword ; 
the continued existence of the Habsburg Monarchy was 
decided in the Turkish wars; on the battlefields of 
Silesia and Bohemia the fate of the old conception of 
the German Empire, indissolubly bound up with the 
crown of the Habsburgs, was sealed. But Viennese 
statecraft, with masterly adroitness, avoiding the con- 
sequences of the decisive results on the field of battle, 
caused the final verdict to be sought in diplomatic de- 
liberations; and thus it came to pass that the wars 
of the eighteenth century exercised no epoch-making 
influence on the inner development of Austria. The 
fusion of civil and military affairs was reserved in the 
case of the Danube kingdom for a later date. 

Matters followed a very different course in Branden- 
burg-Prussia. By the beginning of the seventeenth 
century which saw the decisive formation of States in 

131 



Imperial Germany 

Europe, and during the process of dissolution which 
the mediaeval German Empire underwent for the space 
of two centuries, the reigning house of HohenzoUern 
had succeeded in acquiring and holding a number of 
scattered territories; this success may be traced to the 
calm and resolute, prudent and acquisitive policy of the 
HohenzoUern who possessed in an unwonted degree the 
talent to govern and rare consciousness of the will to 
rule. This utterly artificial State, protected by no natural 
frontiers, knit together by no tribal characteristics or 
ancient traditions, had been formed without much mili- 
tary effort at a time when Germany was almost entirely 
free from great military events. In troublous times, 
amid unquiet surroundings, the State could be main- 
tained only by military forces. With precocious per- 
spicacity the Great Elector while yet in his youth 
recognised this fact, when amid the chaotic confusion 
of the Thirty Years* War he seized the helm of the ship 
of State, which had drifted before the wind under the 
weak rule of his father. He rescued his realm, whose 
very existence was threatened at the time of his acces- 
sion, by providing it with the means of defence. With 
the support of his quickly formed standing army he 
forced the States of Europe, weakened as they were by 
thirty years of warfare, to accede to the demands of 
Brandenburg. 

At the Peace of Westphalia the kingdom of the 
HohenzoUern first made its appearance, consciously and 
with intention, as a military power. From that hour the 
entry of Brandenburg upon the field of European Con- 
tinental politics must be dated; and in this sphere, this 
State, forming the nucleus of North Germany, as it pur- 

132 



Birth of the Military Tradition 

sued its upward course, had to achieve and maintain 
each right by force of arms; indeed it was unable to 
obtain fulfilment of the most modest demands, unless 
it was prepared to enforce them by sending forth its 
armies to do battle. 

Unlike the South German States, whose geo- 
graphical position was so immeasurably more favour- 
able, Brandenburg-Prussia was not allowed the choice 
between the desire to gain in authority by dint of con- 
tinuous warfare, not unattended by risk, and the main- 
tenance of its acquired position and standing by absten- 
tion from any military enterprise in connection with the 
great quarrels of Europe. Brandenburg-Prussia had 
either to wax in greatness and power, or to cease to 
exist. The three territories in the west, the middle and 
the east of Germany had no natural barriers to protect 
them. The lands near the Rhine and in East Prussia 
lay at the storm centres of the European struggles. 
The Great Elector became involved in wars with Poland, 
France and Sweden in the effort, which he was in duty 
bound to make, to preserve his territories intact for the 
State. He learnt how open to invasion was the Mark 
of Brandenburg, when at the battle of Fehrbellin he 
had to rid his country of the Swedish invaders. 

This battle of Fehrbellin, fought upon native soil 
for liberty and home, really marks the birth of Branden- 
burg-Prussia's fame in arms, the beginning of the mili- 
tary traditions of Prussian history; the entry of the 
Hohenzollern Monarchy upon the field of European 
Continental politics dates from the encounters on the 
Rhine of the Brandenburg troops with portions of 
Louis XIV. 's armies. From the very first Branden- 

133 



Imperial Germany 

burg-Prussia^s military power was founded on the two 
great supporting forces of national life in the State : 
the love of home and country, and the conception of 
State power. These corresponded to the two tasks the 
army had to fulfil; that is, to protect the country from 
the ever-imminent danger of attack, and to demonstrate 
and extend the power of the State abroad. The life 
and fate of the Prussian army is closely interwoven with 
the life and destiny of the Prussian people; military 
traditions form an integral part of the history and 
m.emories of the whole nation, without distinction of 
class or rank. This is due to the fact that from the 
first the task of defending their homes and native soil 
fell to the lot of the Prussian military forces, both at 
the battle of Fehrbellin and later in the Seven Years* 
war. 

Despite the aristocratic character of the corps of 
officers and the fact that a number of mercenaries were 
to be found in the ranks, the fusion of the army with 
the nation took place a full century earlier in Prussia 
than in the rest of Europe. Until 1793 the army in 
France had been almost exclusively at the service of 
diplomacy. Not only Voltaire, but all Paris received 
the news of the defeat at Rosbach with cheerful satis- 
faction, for Soubise, routed by Frederick the Great and 
his bold general Seydlitz, was unpopular because he 
was a favourite of Madame de Pompadour. After 
Narva and Pultowa the Russian forces fought in 
furtherance of foreign plans, the connection of which 
with Russian affairs was known only at the Tsar's 
court; and thus it actually happened that after the death 
of Elisabeth of Russia, in pursuance of some whim of 

134 



The Necessity for Defence 

the Tsar's, the Russian army had to range itself on the 
side of Frederick the Great against whom it had been 
fighting for six years. Not until 1812 was the Russian 
nation moved by the events of that year to participate 
in the fate of the Russian forces. In England a mer- 
cenary army, officered by the upper classes, which 
hitherto has practically merely fulfilled the duties of a 
colonial force, is only now, in the course of this war, 
being transformed into a national army. 

In the great wars which Prussia has had to wage 
during the last two hundred and fifty years, her soil 
escaped the havoc wrought by hostile armies in battle 
only in the wars of 1866 and 1870-71. Fehrbellin, 
Eylau and Friedland, the Katzbach, Grossbeeren and 
Wartenburg tell the story of the past, w^hen the liberty 
and life of both land and people depended upon the 
success or defeat of the army. In this world war the 
names of Tannenberg, Angerburg and Miilhausen have 
been added to the old list. History early taught us 
to recognise, and did not permit us to forget, that the 
first and foremost object of military power is the protec- 
tion and defence of the country. 

Since Prussia's frontiers enjoyed no natural protec- 
tion, she was under necessity to place herself in a state 
of defence; driven to safeguard her very existence as a 
State, she acquired the power to strike abroad, and in 
military encounters with neighbouring States she mostly 
proved her superiority and won victories which resulted 
in a further extension of her power. 

From the moment when the Hohenzollern Monarchy 
first showed signs of playing an independent part in 
Europe, the other States on the Continent made it very 

135 



Imperial Germany 

plain that nothing would be yielded to the young State 
but what it acquired at the point of the sword. The 
Great Elector learnt in connection with the Silesian and 
Pomeranian problems, what Frederick William I. learnt 
in the Jiilich-Cleves question, namely, that the Great 
Powers were unwilling to concede any rights to Prussia. 

When Prussia entered the field of Continental 
politics she was forced to seek her salvation by the 
sword, for she clearly foresaw that there was no hope 
of achieving anything by diplomatic action. Recognis- 
ing this fact, Frederick the Great only ventilated the 
Silesian question after having fought and won battles. 
It required the Seven Years' War to enable Prussia 
to obtain a seat and voice in the council of Europe. 
On the occasion of the division of Poland, Prussia 
for the first time realised an increase of power 
without bloodshed, but of what she gained she was 
able to maintain only as much as Frederick the 
Great had won as a belated prize of the Seven 
Years* War. In Napoleonic times Prussia's foreign 
policy was once more dependent on her sword. 
The frontiers of 1815 testified to victorious battles. 
After many fruitless efforts to effect the union of Ger- 
many in accordance with Prussian ideas and without an 
armed conflict, the masterly statecraft of Bismarck, true 
to Prussian traditions, succeeded in finding the solution 
of this German problem in a victorious campaign. The 
stony path of Prussia's Continental policy is marked 
by blood and iron, and over every decisive success the 
standards of the Prussian army flutter. 

At all times in the course of its great history, the 
future of the Prussian State depended on the efficiency 

136 



Other Armies 

of its armed forces and their readiness for immediate 
action ; at all times the safety of the population and its 
means of livelihood depended on Prussia's power to 
defend herself. Frederick the Great could boast with 
justice that, "The world rests no more securely on the 
shoulders of Atlas than Prussia on the shoulders of her 
army." 

In every State the army in its strength and weak- 
ness, in its traditional characteristics, reflects the form 
of the country's government. If constitutional changes 
are made in the State, these changes are bound to 
influence the army. 

This has been France's experience; in consequence 
of the great Revolution the army of the Bourbon Mon- 
archy became the revolutionary army; this in turn on 
the foundation of the Napoleonic Empire became the 
grande armee with its youthful and ambitious general- 
ship; and finally, after the fall of the Second Empire, 
the citizen army of the Republic was formed. 

In the English army, with its aristocratic corps of 
officers and its mercenary rank and file, the rule of the 
British nobility found its true expression ; now that, 
owing to the world war, a citizen army is being formed 
in England too, no doubt its path has been made easy 
by the breaking of the power of the House of Lords 
and the assimilation of the British form of government 
to that of the Latin democracies. The English army 
will hardly become a monarchic one in our sense of the 
word, but in view of the preponderating power vested 
in Parliament by the Constitution, it will remain what 
it originally was, a parliamentary army. 

The Prussian army was the creation of the Monarchy 

'37 



Imperial Germany 

and has remained monarchic. The German army of 
the present day is a monarchic army, because the Ger- 
man Empire is in the fullest sense of the word a mon- 
archic State. 

The Prussian kings created their army at a time 
when in all European Continental States there was need 
of princes with absolute power to maintain the rule of 
the States and to extend their might. Their armies 
consisted of mercenaries from all ends of the earth, but 
led by officers drawn from the native aristocracy. But 
whereas the armies of most of the European States re- 
tained their character for as long as the absolute power 
of the princes lasted, the Hohenzollern gave to the 
development of the Prussian army a different bent 
peculiar to itself. 

King Frederick William I. was not merely the 
harsh drill sergeant of the guards at Potsdam who 
later on proved invincible, he was also the creator 
of the spirit of the Prussian army which has borne 
the Prussian and German flags from Mollwitz and 
Hohenfriedberg to Tannenberg and Verdun. Out 
of the crowd of rough, brave country squires he 
made the Prussian corps of officers, with their ultra- 
strict ideas of duty and honour, their intimate con- 
nection, both outwardly and inwardly, with the men 
entrusted to their care, their spirit of comrade- 
ship, their martial pride and their loyalty to the 
sovereign. This king, who wore a soldier's uniform, 
was the highest officer in the army; the officers who 
wore the king's uniform ranked as the highest class in 
the State, to which the king himself belonged. 

This same monarch who attached the troops firmly to 

138 



Forcing the Military Spirit 

the Monarchy, and in his capacity as the first and 
greatest organiser of armies, realised that the army 
must be closely connected with the nation itself, so that 
the Monarchy, the people and the State should be fused 
into one whole in the army. Seeing far beyond the 
possibilities and the limitations to organisation of his 
own times, he wrote in the first paragraphs of the bar- 
rack regulations, "Every Prussian subject is born to 
bear arms." That was the fundamental idea of universal 
military service which owes its origin not to the French 
Revolution, but to the Prussian Monarchy. Long be- 
fore Lafayette and Carnot, the Prussian soldier-king 
conceived the idea of creating an army by means of 
obligatory military service on the part of all members 
of the State capable of bearing arms : the complete 
blending of the army and the people. 

In this conception he forestalled the events of later 
days. The subsequent history of Prussia, which de- 
cided the fate of the country, provided the necessary 
conditions for its realisation. The seven years' struggle 
for their very existence was the needful factor to bring 
about the complete unity of the Monarchy, State and 
People in Prussia. During the last years of the war 
Frederick the Great had reinforced his army almost 
exclusively with troops raised in the country itself, and 
the Prussian people had learnt that the old terror of 
the recruiting drums was a lesser evil than the terror 
of hostile invasion and devastation. 

The first brilliant victories of King Frederick had 
implanted a feeling of national pride in the Prussian 
people, and had roused them to a sympathetic interest 
m the fortunes of the State. The years of dire neces- 

139 



Imperial Germany 

sity, when defeat threatened, awakened a more definite 
consciousness of participation in the State, and the for- 
tunes of the State made a sensible impression upon the 
outer life of the whole nation. Army, State and People 
became interwoven. 

During twenty years of feeble policy on the part of 
the Cabinet and of occasional half-hearted military ex- 
peditions, the consciousness of this unity lapsed. It 
awoke again with sudden force, when the catastrophe 
that befell the Prussian army at Jena resulted in the 
crippling of the State and French domination. The 
Prussian people never for a moment doubted that its 
lot could not be changed except by force of arms, 
by the might and victory of the Prussian army. No 
need for the French example, with which they were 
confronted, to prepare the soil for universal military 
service. The whole nation was bent heart and soul 
on its introduction, for they had seen the freedom and 
might of their State, built up by Prussian arms, fall 
before superior enemy forces. 

It was Prussia's good fortune that every time the 

nation and the State flagged and relaxed their efforts, 

the consequences were disastrous ; it is fortunate for her, 

too, that hitherto the right men have always arisen 

to save her. When the great necessity of the hour was 

the reorganisation of the Prussian military forces, the 

master mind of Scharnhorst was at her service. His 

regulations for the army were not carried out in detail 

until after 1815, and then not completely nor quite in 

accordance with his ideas. But he, and he alone, 

created the forms into which the armed arising of the 

whole people in 18 13 and 18 14 could be fitted. In the 

140 



National Idealism 

war of liberation, the Prussian army became the nation 
in arms, but Scharnhorst had secured it that the nation 
in arms became the Prussian army with its traditional 
regulations and rules. The spirit of 1813 did not 
take the place of the spirit of the armies of 
Frederick the Great and of Frederick William I., but 
the two were fused. The corps of officers, placed on the 
broader basis of the educated middle classes, took up 
the traditions of the old Prussian corps of officers, and 
the troops were trained in the same school under the 
guidance of the king. 

Because the Prussian army was so intimately 
mingled with the life of the people, and nevertheless 
had remained rooted in the traditions of a century and 
a half, the storms of the March Revolution were not 
able to affect it. It had to such an extent become the in- 
strument, and at the same time the motive force, of 
the great European tasks which the State had under- 
taken, that it was raised above the discussions which 
arose within the State on the question of remodelling it 
in accordance with the times. During his time of ser- 
vice with the army every Prussian, no matter what his 
political views, so to speak, entered the immediate 
service of the State and the king. The nation in the 
King's uniform preserved the conception of the State, 
its national consciousness, in its purest form, un- 
touched by political considerations. Time has been 
unable to alter this in the smallest respect. The world 
war shows us the whole of that portion of the people 
which is capable of bearing arms, completely filled with 
that idealism that is the spirit of the Prussian army. 

By a peculiar dispensation, the statesman, who by 

141 



Imperial Germany 

means of victorious wars created the German Empire, 
brought his policy to a successful issue in the course 
of a struggle to enlarge the army in accordance with 
the creative ideas of William I. The history of the 
army and Prussia's European policy were inter- 
dependent, even at the moment when Prussia's greatest 
task was on the eve of accomplishment. The founding 
cf the German Empire took place amid the thunder of 
cannon, while on the battlefield the Prussian flag waved 
in company with those of the rest of Germany. 

Among the great gifts which Germany owes to 
Prussia the greatest will always be the Prussian army, 
the outcome of centuries of labour, which the storms 
and disorders of time have only made stronger and 
better. Unquestioningly the German States adopted 
the organisation and traditions of the Prussian army. 
History narrates what courage and what military ability 
had been displayed from time immemorial in non- 
Prussian Germany among all the tribes and in all the 
single States : in Bavaria and Saxony, Baden and 
Wurtemberg, among the Frisians and the Franks of the 
Rhine, the Hanoverians and Hessians, the people of 
Holstein, the Hanseatic towns, Mecklenburg and 
Thuringia. The military prowess of all Germany 
reached its zenith on the battlefields of France, when 
the whole German nation in arms fought as Prussia had 
taught it to do. 

In the years that have elapsed between the war 
which brought about the union and this world war, 
the armed forces of the Empire have been welded into 
one whole. The military history of Prussia took 
its place among the great memories of the past. 

142 



The Lesson of 1916 

The heir of Frederick William I. became the war lord 
of the German army, of the German nation in arms. 
German armies are performing deeds of unparalleled 
heroism from the Dvina to the Meuse; amid the hard- 
ships of the present the German nation looks forward 
with confidence to a greater future for the German 
Fatherland, won by the victories of all members of the 
German race irrespective of State or tribe ; meanwhile 
our defeated enemies are filled with wrath against 
Prussia, the military taskmaster of the German past, 
and they violently abuse the spirit of the Prussian army, 
Prussian militarism, which to-day is the spirit of the 
German nation in arms. 

There was a time, not so long ago, when German 
theorists, men who could not or would not learn the 
lessons of history, in their chagrin longed for a future 
which should set German life free from Prussian mili- 
tarism. The present has taught them the lesson which 
the past could not teach, for to-day it is by militarism 
that not only the liberty, but also the future of the 
German nation is being saved. 



»43 



CHAPTER X 

MILITARISM AS A COHESIVE FORCE ^ 

No form of government exists in which there has 
not been a vigorous opposition to what is best and 
strongest in it. Often this opposition is roused and 
takes form, owing to comparisons between the institu- 
tions of the State and those of other countries. Govern- 
ments that give way to agitations in which foreign in- 
stitutions are set up as models for reform at home, 
mistake their loftiest task, which is to maintain in all 
its strength and individuality the State entrusted to their 
care. 

In the case of the German people the danger that 
political institutions abroad should determine the 
tendency of political ambitions at home has always been 
particularly great, for it is one of the strong points of 
the German that his clear gaze penetrates beyond the 
confines of his country, and appreciates sound intel- 
lectual and cultural qualities peculiar to countries 
abroad. That became manifest during the uncertain 
years of the nineteenth century, when Germans, learned 
and unlearned, in their justifiable anxiety to achieve 
some constitutional form of State government, racked 
their brains to determine whether French or English 
constitutional institutions ought to serve as models for 
the new order in Germany. 

• New to this edition. 
144 



Struggle Against Political Influence 

It was very difficult in those critical times for the 
various governments, which were weak in themselves 
rather than strong, to maintain the essential character- 
istics of the German State institutions upon their mon- 
archic foundations. In particular the government of 
Prussia had to resist with all the energy at its disposal 
efforts tendrng to modify the traditional organisation of 
the Prussian army, or to loosen the ties which so closely 
bound the army, and especially the corps of officers, 
to the person of the monarch, and to drag the army into 
the sphere of parliamentary, that is to say, of political, 
influence. Thanks chiefly to the energy and courage 
of the Prince of Prussia, who later became the Emperor 
William I., the Prussian army was maintained with- 
out any alteration in its traditional spirit and organisa- 
tion, and was preserved from a development in the 
course of which it would, like the French army, have 
become a bone of contention between the different parties 
m the country struggling to gain ascendancy. 

A development possessing such characteristics would 
have been much more dangerous in Germany than in 
France, where the modern citizen army, unlike the 
Prussian army, is the work not of the Monarchy, but 
of the Republic and of the parties of the Revolution. 
After the fall of the Monarchy the French corps of 
officers was formed with a view to the political prin- 
ciples of the parties then in power. The great generals 
of the wars of the Revolution were appointed and dis- 
missed by the various parties. The army often played 
an active part in later changes in the form of govern- 
ment. Party favour in the corps of officers, which was 
displayed in such ugly guise in the Dreyfus scandal, 
K 145 



Imperial Germany 

has not been without some influence on the appoint- 
ment of officers even in the course of the world war. 
Though the achievements of the French army are 
worthy of honest respect ; though we may concede that 
the Frenchman has a right to be proud of his army, 
its character and its efficiency, yet we have every reason 
to be thankful that the German army, with its organ- 
isation, its spirit and its traditions handed down by 
the centuries, in this world war represents, by its 
might, its will and its deeds, that which is superior to 
all politics and all party differences — the patriotism of 
the German. 

Of all the miracles that Germany has wrought before 
the eyes of the world since the beginning of the war, 
probably nothing surprised our foes abroad more than 
the conscious, vigorous unanimity with which the Ger- 
mans of all States and all parties went forth to meet 
this deadly peril in order to conquer it. Such Germans 
as had not been misled on the subject of the true state 
of national feeling by the apparently bitter struggles 
of home politics, expected nothing different. But 
abroad little or nothing was known of the forces of 
unity which existed in conjunction with sources of dif- 
ference among the German people. There they did not 
know, and possibly could not know, that the army, 
which summoned the German people to the last and 
greatest test of vitality, was specially adapted to unite 
the nation and keep it so united, just because during a 
long period of peace it proved to be a powerful instru' 
ment of German unity. 

Voices in enemy lands, and also in neutral countries 
where the population for the most part was, and con- 

146 



International Misconceptions 

tinues to be, hostile to us in this war, have taught us 
what conception of the character and qualities of Prusso- 
German militarism is prevalent in the world at large 
which hates the German nation, either because it does 
not know it or because it fears it. The voice of our 
national conscience tells us what German militarism 
really is : the best thing we have achieved in the course 
of our national development as a State and as a people. 

The caricature that Germany's foes behold and that 
they so firmly believe to be true to nature, because, 
alas ! Germans have lent a hand in drawing it, depicts 
German militarism as a despotic power, wielded by a 
military caste, ruling the life of the people, and at 
the bidding of the Monarchy brutally suppressing the 
liberty of German men and the activities even of those 
democratic tendencies of the century which are well 
justified. This caricature shows German militarism 
as the special power of the Prussian State which by 
dint of brute force keeps the German States chained to 
the Empire. According to ideas abroad each small 
German State can desire nothing more ardently than 
to be detached from the organisation of the German 
armed forces and to continue its existence, to quote 
Treitschke, as an "Academy of Arts or a Stock Ex- 
change." The German citizen must, according to them, 
regard it as a deliverance if the army with its stern 
discipline of command and obedience were eliminated 
from German life. 

We cannot expect the Frenchman to realise that it 
was the ever-threatening, restless ambition of the French 
nation which finally forced Prussia and Germany to 
place the whole of their military resources in readiness. 

147 



Imperial Germany 

In view of the Englishman's traditional ignorance 
of the conditions of life and general circumstances 
among the nations on the Continent, he cannot be ex- 
pected to understand how weapons grew more and more 
formidable during the many centuries of friction be- 
tween the European States, and that Prussia-Germany 
was bound to acquire the strongest armaments and the 
sharpest sword, because the formation of States in 
Central Europe was only possible in the course of un- 
interrupted warfare, and because there were no natural 
barriers to protect such German frontiers as German 
arms could not defend. 

Nor do we Germans wish hostile or unfriendly 
foreigners to think that the nation, which more than 
any other inclines to work thoughtfully, independently 
and assiduously for the civilisation of humanity, did 
not find it easy, both mentally and morally, to set its 
faith in its strength above its faith in its ideals. Those 
times, let us hope, are past when the German people, 
with ingenuous confidence in success, sought under- 
standing abroad for its character and its inner worth. 
Now, indeed, is the time for the German nation itself 
to recognise its proper character without reserve; then 
it will discover where its weakness and where its 
strength lies. Then it can assert before the whole 
world that its greatest strength, which has stood the 
test of the past and the present, is to be found in that 
which in the hour of direst need and danger saved the 
life of Germany : German militarism. 

The true picture of militarism, which we Germans 
see, is indeed very different from that which confronts 
the prejudiced imagination of the foreigner. Different, 

148 



The Army To-Day 

too, from that which even in Germany a few parties, 
politicians and newspapers had conjured up before the 
war for poHtical and tactical purposes, probably not in 
strict accordance with their inner convictions. 

The army to-day is what history has made it: the/ 
vigorous expression of the unity of Empire, State and/ 
people. So it is in France as well. The Republican 
State and the French nation are interwoven in the army. 
No German will deny this, and no German doubted it 
when the catastrophe of the w^orld war befell Europe. 
In Germany national unity finds expression in the army 
in a different form, corresponding to the difference in 
character of the life of the State and the nation. People 
beyond the German frontiers refuse to recognise this, 
and to their own disadvantage they imagined a non- 
existent antagonism between the German army and 
the German people. 

When Prince Bismarck, soon after his accession to 
office, expressed his clear recognition of historic needs 
in the well-known phrase that the German problem 
must be solved by blood and iron, this most soldierly 
of all the great German statesmen since the days of 
Frederick the Great knew very well that the same 
weapons which he credited with the power of bringing 
about an unavoidable separation, would also have the 
power to achieve the needful union. Before the blood 
of all the German tribes had flowed for the common 
German cause on the battlefields of France, the Ger- 
man States had already taken the most decisive step 
toward their union with Prussia by adopting the main 
features of Prussian army organisation. Military union 
preceded political union. 

149 



Imperial Germany 

After the founding of the Empire, the idea of the 
unity of the German people and of the fellowship of 
all the States found acceptance more quickly and more 
easily in the army than anywhere else. The particu- 
larist tendencies, which continued to exist here and there 
after 1871, did not in the least affect the army. De- 
spite their affection for their own State with its narrower 
limits, and especially for their own princes, officers 
and men in the north and the south felt themselves to 
be first and foremost members of the German army, 
of the German nation in arms. None of the institutions 
of the Prussian State found such integral acceptance in 
the Empire as the army. Thus the intimate bonds 
uniting the Federal States with the leading State of 
Prussia found their most spontaneous expression in the 
adoption of Prussian army institutions. While justi- 
fiable peculiarities in the individual Federal States are 
fully recognised, more especially the unique position 
conceded to the Bavarians, the nation is conscious of 
the existence of one and only one united German army. 

Bismarck's great gift of divination consisted in this : 
when he made decisions which had the most far-reach- 
ing consequences, at one and the same time and to the 
same remarkable extent, he was capable of embracing 
in his gaze the world and the world's history, and of 
looking deep into the soul of the German people and 
into Germany's prospective career. This gift was prob- 
ably never more clearly exemplified than when he 
brought about the union of the States of Germany by 
means of wars, led up to with masterly diplomacy. 
These wars enabled him to reach the goal at which he 
aimed in Prussia's foreign policy, and later on in that 

15^ 



Founding the German Empire 

of the North German Federation — namely, the founding 
of the Empire. 

In the very moment of the crisis, the concep- 
tion of German unity was released from the stifling 
atmosphere of factional quarrels and home politics. 
Acting independently of the manifold prejudices and 
fetters of party politics in which the conception of the 
Empire had been entangled for more than a generation, 
the German nation in arms, which stood upon the soil 
of France, took up the work and founded the Empire 
on the great military traditions of Germany. Thereby 
the army with its spirit and its traditions became not 
only materially, but also spiritually the support of the 
German Empire, a support beyond the reach of home 
politics, particularism and parties. If in this w^orld 
war there was one hope of our foreign foes that must 
prove vain, it was the hope that the call to arms and 
common service in the army throughout Germany would 
animate particularist traditions with new life and shake 
the unity of the Empire. The military threads v/hich 
Bismarck had succeeded in weaving into his great 
work, the founding of the Empire, made the German 
Imperial Army representative of the conception of the 
Empire, just as the Prussian army had been repre- 
sentative of the Prussian State. On this occasion, too, 
the army of all Germany followed the traditions of 
the Prussian army and assured their continuance in 
the future. 

State particularism, which for centuries played havoc 
with Germany's welfare, was first overcome by the 
nation in arms, and was chiefly reduced to impotence by 
the spirit of the army. Thus, during the years which 



Imperial Germany 

have passed since the Empire was founded, up to the 
outbreak of the world war, the German army was the 
means by which political, social and religious breaches 
were healed, and which welded the Germans into one 
united nation within the new Empire. Not that the 
army in so doing consciously fulfilled a definite mission. 
The specifically German turn which Scharnhorst's 
creative genius had given to the conception of universal 
military service, which Boyen, King William and Roon 
had further developed, proved capable of accommo- 
dating the peculiarities of German national life with- 
out exercising any constraint. 

In contradistinction to the French army, the Prus- 
sian, and later on the German, army has never come 
under the influence of prevailing political tendencies, 
either as regards its views or its organisation. It has 
remained as unaffected by revolutionary as by re- 
actionary ideas, whereas the French army after its 
glorious Napoleonic era had to submit to becoming a 
Royalist army once more, and after that a Republican ; 
then again a Napoleonic, and finally a Republican army 
for the second time. While the religious struggle 
(Kulturkampf) made not the slightest impression on the 
German army, in France the campaign against the 
Church, fought out under Combes and Briand, spread 
to the ranks of the soldiers. 

In France, too, where political differences, despite 
the passionate zeal with which opponents defend their 
views, do not penetrate very deeply into national life, 
the influence of politics on the army did not materially 
affect its unity. 

In Germany the consequences would have been im- 

153 



A United Germany 

measurably serious if political and religious quarrels 
had spread to the army. The relation of direct allegi- 
ance in which the German army stands to the monarch, 
indicates de facto certain rights of the monarchy as 
well as the severance of the nation in arms from the 
political, religious and social differences of the people, 
differences to which the monarch also stands superior. 
The law of the land complies with the highest national 
demands and gives every citizen, irrespective of class 
and profession, the proud privilege of feeling himself 
simply and solely a German, as long as he wears the 
king's uniform. 

We Germans did not need the world war to make 
us realise that the German people under arms, with its 
banner unfurled, is united and rises superior to the 
many differences and divisions which have always ex 
isted in the national life of Germany. We knew that, 
if it came to real warfare, that spirit would manifest 
itself with redoubled might, which had dwelt in the 
barracks and on the parade ground, the spirit of obedi- 
ence ennobled by comradeship, of disciplined unity 
and of well-regulated equality. 

Because it owes direct allegiance and obedience to 
the monarch, the German army is intimately bound up 
with the conception of the Empire and the idea of its 
unity; owing to the special character of our system of 
defence and of our army organisation, the army, far 
from being merely an instrument of power over the 
people in the hands of the government, is, on the con- 
trary, an integral part of the life of the nation. It is, 
though in a different way, as representative of the unity 
of the nation as are the parliamentary assemblies. 



Imperial Germany 

In the army and its service there is no room for 
political and religious contrasts; in it historical differ- 
ences are harmoniously blended, and for this very reason 
they appear with greater emphasis among the German 
people, because our historical development has pre- 
vented us from crushing the manifold forms of intellec- 
tual, social and public life by violent pressure exerted 
from below at the instigation of the government. 

Universal military service integrally adopted as it 
has been in Germany, recognises without distinction 
that it is the duty of every man to defend his country. 
But Scharnhorst's creation has provided that the forces, 
which were acquired by intellectual and social grada- 
tions in the development of the nation, should be in- 
corporated in the army by means of universal military 
service. It was absolutely justifiable and necessary to 
break with the traditions of the Fredericks, in so far 
as these demanded a corps of officers formed entirely by 
members of the aristocracy ; and the creators of the 
Prusso-German national army were led to adopt the 
specifically German idea of a corps of officers formed 
from members of the intellectually superior classes, and 
to make the right to enjoy the rank of an offixer de- 
pendent on proof of the attainment of a certain standard 
of education. Thus that distinction in national life 
which has the fullest justification, has found a place in 
the structure of the army, without in the least affecting 
the principle of equal obligation for all. Through the 
material of the national army, an institution of a demo- 
cratic nature, runs a thread of the modern aristocracy. 
The happy thought of making entry into the corps of 
officers contingent upon election by the corps of officers, 

154 



The Foundations of Discipline 

made it possible in the structure of the national army to 
take account of the structure of the nation. 

Probably nothing in the past, as in the present, has 
to such a degree assured the superiority of our army 
as the fact that the leading position, which is the natural 
due of those who rank highest in intellect and education, 
has been retained for them in the army. In this way 
obedience and discipline, apart from all formal regula- 
tions, were founded upon the natural confidence which, 
especially among the German people, the unlettered man 
has always gladly reposed in the man of education. The 
world war has shown that devotion and contempt of 
death are the common heritage of every German soldier. 
But it has also been a song in praise of mutual con- 
fidence between officers and men, such as the world has 
never seen. 

As the Roman Catholic Church has such a perfect 
organisation, because its institutions are only the out- 
ward forms of inner forces which exist in the Catholic 
faith and in every devout Catholic, so the German army 
is an organisation of unique perfection, because in its 
institutions and regulations, its relation to State life and 
national life, it takes account of those forces which sup- 
port and form the State and the nation. 

More by means of the army than by means of the 
constitution or of civil and common law do the State 
and the nation in Germany achieve unity. When the 
whole nation takes up arms in defence of the Empire, 
the barriers fall which political strife has raised between 
the individual and the State, just as the breaches are 
closed which existed in the nation itself. 

The great political conceptions, to varied interpreta- 

'55 



Imperial Germany 

tions of which all political quarrels are ultimately re- 
ducible, the conceptions of monarchy, aristocracy and 
democracy are all merged in one another when the Ger- 
man nation becomes an army under the command of 
their Imperial War Lord and the leadership of a corps of 
officers, chosen from the modern aristocracy of intellect, 
culture and education ; all these are united by a demo- 
cratic sense of comradeship which lays upon all Ger- 
mans, without distinction of class or profession, one 
single and glorious obligation, and in distress and 
danger makes all Germans brothers. The spirit of 
German militarism, as Prussia first developed it and 
Germany adopted it, is every whit as monarchical as 
it is aristocratic and democratic, and it would cease to 
be German and the mighty expression of German Im- 
perial military power and military efficiency if it were 
to change. If our enemies, to whom with God's help our 
militarism will bring defeat, abuse it, we know that we 
must preserve it, for to us it means victory and the future 
of Germany. 

This unparalleled fight for existence which Germany 
is waging is the great test in the world's history of the 
strength and power of resistance of all that which, in 
the remote as in the immediate past, government and 
people have built up in Germany. This applies first 
and foremost to the German army; for it is the army 
which, as the work of centuries, is to-day exposed to the 
severest test. 

Prussia and Germany may have failed sometimes to 
modify traditional institutions in accordance with the 
progress of modern times, fearing that by taking such 
steps they might lose their safe anchorage in the past, 

156 



Victorious in the World War 

in history. This cannot be said with regard to the 
army. From the days when the Great Elector created 
the first Brandenburg military force up to the most 
recent times, during which the Emperor William II. 
always considered it his supreme duty as a ruler, side by 
side with the building of the navy, to increase and 
strengthen the army, both qualitatively and quantita- 
tively, untiring energy and unique diligence have been 
unceasingly expended on the German army, whether the 
State were rich or poor, secure or exposed to danger, 
victorious or unsuccessful — whether there was opposition 
from abroad or from uncomprehending majorities in 
Parliament. Those responsible for the organisation of 
the army have always seen to it that the spirit of the 
times should penetrate the spirit of the army, and thus 
rejuvenate the spirit of the past. 

The band of mercenaries, led by rude country squires, 
which under the Elector won the battle of Fehrbellin, 
has thus grown to be the great national army of the 
Germans, which, led by a Hohenzollern who wears the 
Imperial crown, victoriously withstands the world in 
the war of 1914. The spirit of the twentieth century has 
become merged in the memory of Prusso-German glory 
in the field, and to-day, as long ago, there resound be- 
neath the old flags the words of Heinrich Kleist, the poet 
who sang of the German fight for freedom, and the fame 
of Prussian arms: '*Into the dust with Brandenburg's 
foes I" 



157 



CHAPTER XI 

POLITICAL DEFICIENCIES OF GERMANY 

The history of our home policy, with the exception 
of a few bright spots, is to the time of the world war 
a history of political mistakes. Despite the abund- 
ance of merits and great qualities with which the 
German nation is endowed, political talent has 
hitherto been denied it. No people has found it 
so difficult as the Germans to attain solid and perm- 
anent political institutions, although we were the first, 
after the downfall of antiquity and the troublous times 
of the migration of nations, to acquire that stable 
national existence which is founded on might, and 
which is the preliminary condition for the growth of 
real political life. Though, thanks to our military 
prowess, we found it easy enough to overcome foreign 
obstruction and interference in our national life, at all 
times we found it was a very hard task to overcome 
even small obstacles in the path of our own political 
development. 

It has often happened to other nations that military 
disasters, disasters in their foreign policy, have severely 
injured and even overthrown their form of government 
at home. We Germans, owing to our political clumsi- 
ness, have by the formlessness and confusion of our 
internal national life often defrauded ourselves of suc- 
cesses won in battle, and for centuries rendered an effec- 

158 



Not a Political People 

tive foreign policy impossible by our narrow-minded and 
short-sighted home policy. 

We were not a political people. Not that we ever 
lacked penetration and understanding for the sequence 
of political things, or for the essence and association of 
the religious, moral, social, legal and industrial forces 
which condition politics. We have always possessed 
this political knowledge to the same extent as our 
contemporaries, and even to a greater. Nor did 
we fail to realise our own peculiar political short- 
comings. But what we did often lack, is the art of 
proceeding from insight to practical application, and the 
greater art of doing the right thing, politically, by a sure 
creative instinct, instead of only after much thought and 
considerable cogitation. 

How can it otherwise be explained that in the 
struggle between different nationalities the German has 
so often succumbed to the Czech and the Slovene, the 
Magyar and the Pole, the French and the Italian ? — 
that in this sphere the German has usually come 
off second best in comparison with almost all his 
neighbours ? 

Politically, as in no other sphere of life, there was 
an obvious disproportion between our knowledge and 
our power. We can boast at present of a particularly 
flourishing state of political science and especially 
political economy. The influence of deep learning on 
practical politics was seldom felt. This was not because 
only a small class of educated men, and not the mass 
of the people, participate and take an interest in 
knowledge. 

The German nation, on the contrary, more than any 

159 



Imperial Germany 

other people, and particularly as regards the lower 
classes, is eager to learn and capable of so doing. 
Among many fine traits of character that has ever been 
one of the finest our nation possesses. But for the Ger- 
man the knowledge of political things was usually a 
purely intellectual matter, which he did not care to con- 
nect with the actual occurrences of political life. It would 
have been possible for him to do so only in the rarest 
cases. For, although well-developed logical powers 
result in good judgment, yet there is too often a lack 
of that political discernment which can grasp the bear- 
ing of acquired knowledge on the life of the com- 
munity. The want of political aptitude sets a narrow 
limit, even to highly developed political science. 

During my term of office I took a lively interest in 
furthering political instruction, and I expect the results 
to be better and better the more Germans of all classes 
and all degrees of culture are given the opportunity of 
following such courses of instruction. But much water 
will flow under the bridges before these weaknesses and 
deficiencies in our political character, which are partly 
innate and partly acquired by education, can be so 
removed. 

In the meantime Fate, who, as we all know, is an 
excellent but expensive teacher, [has undertaken to edu- 
cate us politically by a tremendous war which has called 
forth all the splendid and incomparably fine qualities 
of our nation. It will, let us hope, not only heal our 
wounds and mend our weaknesses, but also in addition 
provide us with political talent.] In spite of a past full 
of political disasters, we did not possess that talent. I 
once had a conversation on this subject with the late 

1 60 



The Weak Point 

Ministerial Director Althoff. "Well, what can you 
expect ? " replied that distinguished man in his 
humorous way. "We Germans are the most learned 
nation in the world and the best soldiers. We have 
achieved great things in all the sciences and arts; the 
greatest philosophers, the greatest poets and musicians 
are Germans. Of late we have occupied the foremost 
place in the natural sciences and in almost all technical 
spheres, and in addition to that we have accomplished 
an enormous industrial development. How can you 
wonder that we are political asses ? There must be a 
weak point somewhere." 

["A sense of the general good supports the State, 
self-seeking disintegrates it. Hence it is useful to point 
out the general good to the individual." Plato wrote 
thus more than two thousand years ago.] 

Political sense connotes a sense of the general good. 
That is just what the Germans lack. Politically gifted 
nations, sometimes consciously, sometimes instinctively, 
at the right moment, and even without being driven 
by necessity, set the general interests of the nation 
above their particular pursuits and desires. It is a 
characteristic of the German to employ his energy in- 
dividually, and to subordinate the general good to his 
narrower and more immediate interests. That was 
what Goethe was thinking of in his cruel remark, so 
often quoted, that the Germans are very capable 
individually, and wretchedly inefficient in the bulk. 

The instinct, proper to man, to unite in societies, 
associations and communities for special purposes, this 
natural, political instinct reaches its highest develop- 
ment in the community which forms a State. Where 
L i6i 



Imperial Germany 

this highest form of development is attained consciously, 
the lower forms become of less and less importance as 
a rule. Society, united for national purposes, subordi- 
nates to itself all the smaller individual societies which 
serve ideal or material ends; not forcibly or suddenly, 
but in the course of the gradual expansion of national 
consciousness. 

The progress of this development indicates the pro- 
gress of national unity and solidarity. Nations w-ith a 
strong political sense meet this development half way, 
the German has often vigorously opposed it — not on 
account of ill-will, or a lack of patriotic feeling, but 
following the dictates of his nature, which feels more 
at home in small associations than when included in 
the community of the whole nation. Herr von Miquel 
once said to me in his caustic way, as the result of forty 
years of parliamentary experience: "German Parlia- 
ments, in a comparatively short space of time, mostly 
sink to the level of a district council, interested in 
nothing but local questions and personal squabbles. 
In our Parliament a debate rarely maintains a high 
level for more than one day; on the second day the 
ebb begins, and then bagatelles are discussed as futilely 
and in as much detail as possible.'* 

This national inclination is responsible for the 
vogue for Associations and Clubs in Germany. The old 
joke that two Germans cannot meet without founding 
a club has a serious significance. The German feels 
at home in his clubs and societies. And if such an 
association exists for greater purposes of an industrial 
or a political kind, then its members, and especially 
its leaders, soon see in it the point of Archimedes whence 

162 



The Association Fetish 

they would like to unhinge the whole political world. 
[They are then apt to forget the wise words of Gottfried 
Keller, that any agitation must always be directed 
towards making life sound and prosperous, and must 
never become an end in itself.] 

The late member of the Reichstag, von Kardorff, 
said to me, not long before his death : " Look what 
maniacs we are about associations. The association 
itself becomes for us an end in itself. The Alliance 
Frangaise collected millions to establish French schools 
abroad, but it never dreamt of shaping the policy of the 
Government. Our Pan-German Association has done 
much to arouse national feeling, but, on the other hand, 
it; considers itself the supreme court of appeal in ques- 
tions of foreign policy. The Navy League has done 
great service in popularising the idea of a navy, but has 
not always resisted the temptation to prescribe to the 
Government and Reichstag what course to pursue in 
naval policy. The Association of Farmers, founded at 
a time of great stress in the agricultural world, has 
benefited the farmers as a whole very greatly, but has 
now reached such a point that it wants to treat every- 
thing in Jts own way, and runs great risk of over-shoot- 
ing the mark. We get so wrapped up in the idea of our 
association that we can see nothing beyond it." 

In smaller things the German can easily find men 
of like ideas and like interests, but in great matters, 
very rarely. The more specialised the aim, the quicker 
is a German association founded to further it; and, what 
is more, such associations are not temporary, but per- 
manent. It is to this tendency toward the individual 
that the strength of our great Associations and their 

163 



Imperial Germany 

importance in our political life is to be attributed. [The 
Association of Farmers has more than 300,000 members, 
the Catholic People's League 700,000; the social demo- 
cratic Trades Unions numbered 260,000 members in 
1895, 680,000 in 1900, 1% million in 1906, and 2% 
million in 1912. In no other country do the associations 
number so many members ; in no other country do asso- 
ciations and leagues play such a part in political life. 
But there is a reverse side to this bent towards associa- 
tion for special purposes.] The wider the aim, the more 
slowly do the Germans unite to attain it, and the more 
liable they are, on the slightest excuse, to forsake this 
fellowship which cost so much trouble to found. 

Our nation is undoubtedly, in a high degree, cap- 
able of uniting in strong and purposeful action in 
national movements. [That was proved in August, 
19 14, and] there are plenty of instances in our 
history. [Treitschke once said that foreigners have 
no notion of how deep the springs of German life lie. 
We ourselves had no idea what treasures of devotion 
and renunciation, of fearlessness and self-restraint this 
great nation possessed. What gifts have been showered 
on the battlefields and in the laboratories, in the trenches 
and in the offices. Our technical men and our chemists 
were the equals of the members of our General Staff. 
The inventiveness of our industrialists rivalled the 
courage of our U-boat men and our airmen. From the 
material and the intellectual point of view, the German 
nation can look back upon the mightiest effort that has 
ever been put forth in the world. The achievements of 
our people since the beginning of the world war have 
never been equalled, let alone surpassed.] 

164 



The War of Liberation 

Thank Heaven, we have never entirely lacked 
national consciousness, enthusiasm, and self-sacrifice, 
and, in the times of greatest disruption, the feeling that 
all belonged to one nation never died out, but, on the 
contrary, grew to a passionate longing. Our periods of 
greatest political weakness, times when the State was 
clearly on the verge of collapse, were the most flourish- 
ing days of the intellectual life of our nation. The 
classic writers of the Middle Ages, as well as those of 
modern times, created our national literature in the midst 
of the decaying and decayed public life of the nation. 
[If we were forged into one nation by Bismarck's 
hammer, that was only possible because our thinkers 
and poets, the intellectual leaders of the people, had 
already roused our national consciousness.] 

On the other hand, we, as a people, never lost the 
consciousness of our political unity and independence 
to such an extent as to bear the yoke of foreign rule 
for any length of time. In the hour of need the Ger- 
mans found, in the depths of their hearts, the will 
and the strength to overcome national disintegration. 
The War of Liberation a hundred years ago, which has 
lesser prototypes in earlier centuries, will ever remain 
a token of German national will-power and love of 
liberty, [and all the world must reverence the unassum- 
ing greatness, the faith in God, the determination and 
the devotion to duty which our nation without exception 
exhibits in the present war. If in former years indivi- 
duals sometimes gave way to patriotic anxiety, in view of 
many a manifestation of recent times, they will now 
thank God for having vouchsafed us the greatest happi- 
ness — that of living to see how our nation, in the time 

165 



Imperial Germany 

of storm and danger, increased in stature and surpassed 
itself.] 

But in contradistinction to the nations that are, 
politically speaking, more happily endowed, the expres- 
sions of German national unity are rather occasional 
than permanent. [Lack of continuity from the time of 
Charles the Great to that of Bismarck was really the 
characteristic and the ill-fate of German history. The at- 
tempts of the Carolingian Kings and the Ottos, of the 
Salic monarchs and the Hohenstaufen were never pur- 
sued to a final success; the Emperors of the House of 
Habsburg who made the same attempt stopped half-way. 
The fifty years that separate the Congress of Vienna 
from the final decision on the battlefields of Bohemia, the 
years from 1814 to 1866, produced only unsuccessful 
experiments. It was chiefly owing to this lack of 
stability that the political union of Germany came about 
so late, while in France and England, Russia and Spain, 
a like process had taken place much earlier.] 

"I have sung of the Germans' June, 
But that will not last till October," 

was Goethe's lament not long after the War of Libera- 
tion. Only too often with us the union dictated by 
necessity was followed again by disruption into smaller 
political associations, states, tribes, classes; or, in 
modern times, into parties that preferred their own 
narrower tasks and aims to those of the nation at 
large, and degraded the great deeds of national unity 
by making them the object of ugly party quarrels. In 
German history national unity has for centuries been the 

166 



Unrivalled Exploits 

exception, and separatism in various forms, adapted to 
the circumstances of the times, the rule. 

Hardly any nation's history is so full of great 
successes and achievements in every sphere of man's 
activity. German military and intellectual exploits 
are unrivalled. But the history of no nation can tell 
of such an utter disproportion for centuries and cen- 
turies, between political progress on the one hand and 
capability and achievements on the other. The cen- 
turies of political impotence, during which Germany 
was crowded out of the ranks of the Great Powers, 
have little to tell of the defeat of German arms by 
foreign forces, with the exception of the time of 
Napoleon I. Our prolonged national misfortune was 
not due to foreigners; it was our own fault. 

We first appear in history as a nation split up into 
hostile tribes. The German Empire of mediaeval times 
was not founded by the voluntary union of the tribes, 
but by the victory of one single tribe over the others, 
who for a long time unwillingly bore the rule of the 
stronger. The most brilliant period of our history, 
the period when the German Empire led Europe un- 
opposed, was a time of national unity, in which the tribes 
and princes found a limit to their self-will in the will and 
the power of the Emperor. The Empire of the Middle 
Ages only succumbed in the struggle with the Papacy, 
because Roman politicians had succeeded in rousing 
opposition to the Emperor in Germany. The weakening 
of Imperial power afforded the princes a w^elcome oppor- 
tunity for strengthening their own. While political life 
in Germany was split up into a large number of in- 
dependent cities and territorial communities, in France, 

167 



Imperial Germany 

under the strong rule of her kings, a united State was 
formed, which took the place of Germany as leader of 
Europe. 

Then came the religious split. The German terri- 
torial States, that for long had been united with the 
Empire in appearance only, became open enemies 
owing to the religious quarrel, and (a thing that is essen- 
tially characteristic of our nation) the German States, 
Protestant as well as Catholic, did not hesitate to ally 
themselves with foreigners of a different persuasion, 
in order to fight fellow-countrymen of a different per- 
suasion. The religious wars set the German nation 
back centuries in its development; they almost 
destroyed the old Empire, except in name; they 
created the single independent States whose rivalry 
brought about struggles that filled the next two and 
a half centuries, until the foundation of the new Ger- 
man Empire. The Western and Northern Marches 
of Germany were lost and had to be recovered, in our 
times, at the point of the sword. The newly discovered 
world beyond the ocean was divided up among the 
other nations, and the German flag disappeared from 
the seas, and has only regained its rights within the 
last decades. 

The ultimate national union was not achieved by 
peaceful settlement, but in the battle of German 
against German. And as the old Empire was founded 
by a superior tribe, so the new was founded by the 
strongest of the individual States. [The struggle for 
political unity, which began after the fall of the Caro- 
lingian Empire, was decided on the batdefield of Konig- 
gratz in favour of the most capable and successful 

i68 



Internal Unity Essential 

reigning family.] German history had completed a 
circle, as it were. In a modern form, but in the old way, 
the German nation has, after a thousand years, once 
again, and more perfectly, completed the work which it 
accomplished in early times, and for whose destruction it 
alone was to blame. 

Only a nation, sound to the core, and of indestruc- 
tible vitality, could achieve this. True, we Germans 
have taken a thousand years to create, destroy and 
recreate, what for centuries other nations have possessed 
as the firm basis of their development — a national 
State. If we want to advance along the paths that the 
founding of our Empire has opened anew to us, we 
must insist on the suppression of such forces as might 
again endanger the unity of our national life. The 
best powers of Germany must not, as in olden times, 
be dissipated in struggles of the Imperial Government 
against individual States, and in struggles of the indi- 
vidual States against each other, without any considera- 
tion for the interests of the Empire. [Disraeli, the 
English statesman who inaugurated Imperial policy on 
the other side of the Channel, placed at the head of 
his programme the doctrine that the welfare of a country 
depends on its standing in the world, and that for that 
very reason a great country must be as united as possible 
at home in order to be able to develop its might abroad.] 



169 






CHAPTER XII 

HOME POLICY UNDER THE NEW EMPIRE 

The founding of the Empire overcame Germany*s 
political disruption and changed our political life com- 
pletely ; but it was unable to change the character of 
the German people at the same time, or to transform 
our inherited political shortcomings into virtues. The 
German remained a separatist, even after 1871 ; different, 
and more modern, but still a separatist. 

In the particularism of the single States, German 
separatism found its strongest but by no means its 
only possible expression. State separatism has im- 
pressed us most directly, because it was responsible, 
primarily, for the national disasters in German develop- 
ment during the last centuries. That is why all patriots 
wished to defeat it, and this desire was fulfilled by 
Bismarck. So far as man can tell, we need fear no 
serious injury to the unity of our national life from 
separatist efforts of individual States. But we are none 
the less by no means free from manifestations of the 
separatist spirit. This spirit after, and even at the 
time of, the unification of Germany, sought a new field 
of political activity, and found it in the struggle of 
political parties. 

The German party system, in contradistinction to 
those of other nations, which are in many cases older and 
more firmly rooted, possesses a specifically separatist 

170 



German Party System 

character, and this is manifest in those points in which 
our party system differs from that of other countries. 
We have small parties that are sometimes formed for 
the sake of very narrow interests and objects, and 
carry on a struggle of their own which it is hardly pos- 
sible to include in the affairs of a great Empire. The 
religious conflict in all its strength has found its way 
into our party system. The struggle between the 
various classes of society has retained almost all its 
vigour in the German party system, whereas in older 
civilised States the differences have been more and 
more completely adjusted by the industrial and social 
developments of modern times. 

Our party system has inherited the dogmatism and 
small-mindedness, the moroseness and the spite that 
used to thrive in the squabbles of the German tribes 
and States. In other countries the party system is a 
national matter of home politics, and community of 
views with a foreigner is of no weight compared with 
the consciousness of belonging to the same nation as 
those of the opposite party at home. Abroad, the fact 
that the views of a political party are shared by 
foreigners is on occasion paraded in academic speeches 
at International Congresses, but it has no influence on 
practical politics. We Germans had strong movements 
in great parties, that demanded the internationalisation 
of party ideas, and were not convinced that the party 
system has national limitations. Here again is a return 
in modern guise of an old German abuse. Among other 
nations it is self-understood that the special interests 
of a political party must be subordinated, not only to 
the greatest national interests, but also to any wider 

171 



Imperial Germany 

interests; it is in this point above all that our parties 
often failed. All too seldom in the German Empire did 
we comply with the emphatic command : " Country 
before party." Not so much because the German's love 
of his country is less than any foreigner's, but Because 
his love of his party is so much greater. Consequently, 
a momentary success, or even a momentary manifesta- 
tion of power by his own party, seemed only too often 
to the German so tremendously important — more 
important than the general progress of the nation. 

It cannot be said that our German party struggles 
are carried on with more heat than in other countries. 
The German's political passion rarely rises to more 
than an average temperature, even in times of excite- 
ment, and that, at any rate, is a good thing. Amongst 
other nations, especially those of Latin race, the parties, 
in moments of stress, fling themselves at each other 
with an elemental passion that not seldom leads to 
excesses unknown to us Germans. But these heated 
outbursts, which are decisive for the success or defeat 
of a party or group of parties, are speedily followed 
there by overtures of peace and reconciliation. 

It is quite different here. We know nothing of the 
fanatic passion in excited conflicts which discharges 
itself like a thunder-cloud, but also, like a thunder- 
storm, clears the air of party politics. But we 
also lack the conciliatory spirit. If German parties 
have once opposed one another, even in matters 
of small political importance, it is only slowly and 
with difficulty that they forget and forgive each 
other. Occasional antagonism too often becomes 
lasting enmity, and, if possible, a fundamental 

172 



Destructive Hatreds 

difference in political principles is fabricated after- 
wards, though neither of the opposing parties was 
aware of it in the first instance. Very often, when 
discreet and well-meant attempts are made to bring 
about a reconciliation or agreement between parties 
holding strongly antagonistic convictions, this antagon- 
ism proves to have been discovered on the occasion of 
some quite recent party conflict, either about national 
questions of secondary importance, or even about a 
question of the power of a political party. 

Anyone who stands a little outside party machinery 
and the party rut often fails to understand why our 
parties cannot unite for the settlement of essentially un- 
important questions of legislation, why they fight out 
slight differences of opinion on details of financial, 
social or industrial policy with such acrimony, as if the 
weal and woe of the Empire depended on them. No 
doubt praiseworthy German conscientiousness has some 
small part in this, but it is not the decisive factor. 
What is decisive is the fact that to each individual party 
the hatred of other parties seems of more essential 
importance than the legislative matter in question, 
which is often only seized as a welcome opportunity 
to emphasise the existing differences of party politics. 
[Uhland makes grim Wolf von Wunnenstein refuse the 
thanks of old Rauschebart with the words : " I fought 
out of hatred of the cities and not to gain your thanks." 
That is a typical example of German thought and 
feeling.] 

Immutable loyalty within the party is the cause of 
their quarrelsomeness. Just because the German party 
man clings so steadfastly and even lovingly to his 

173 



Imperial Germany 

party, he is capable of such intense hatred of other 
parties and has such difficulty in forgetting insults and 
defeats suffered at their hands. Here again in modern 
guise we have the old German character. As the tribes 
and States were firmly knit together in themselves and 
quarrelled with each other, so the parties to-day. Pro- 
verbial German loyalty benefits the small political 
associations primarily, and the great national com- 
munity only secondarily. A German Government will 
almost always sue in vain for the abundant loyalty 
which is spontaneously devoted to the party cause. 
Even Bismarck experienced this. The man who got 
the better of the separatism of the States could not 
master the separatism of the parties. Although he had 
won the love and confidence of the German nation to 
a greater extent than anyone else, Prince Bismarck was 
seldom if ever successful in attempts to secure that 
devotion which was offered to party leaders. 

Treitschke says somewhere that the hearts of the 
Germans have always belonged to poets and generals, 
not to politicians. That is quite true, if we except 
the party leaders. The Germans certainly forget them 
very soon after their death or retirement, but as long 
as their activity lasts they enjoy the whole-hearted 
loyalty and affection of all who belong to the party. 
Ever since we have had political parties the popular 
men have been party men and party leaders, and their 
followers supported them even in opposition to Bis- 
marck. Right and wrong, success and failure, play an 
astonishingly small part in this. German loyalty to 
a party leader is self-sacrificing, unprejudiced and un- 
critical, as true loyalty which springs from love should 

174 



Prevailing Conservatism 

be. And it really makes no difference whether the 
party leader is successful or not, whether he looks 
back on victories or defeats. It has hardly ever hap- 
pened in Germany that a party refused to follow its 
leader, even if it was plain to the meanest intelligence 
that he was taking them into difficulties, let alone if it 
appeared that the tactics of the party leaders were not 
in accordance with the aims and objects of the State. 

It has never been particularly difficult in Germany 
to organise an opposition to the Government; but it 
was always very hard to set up a movement of oppo- 
sition within a party with any success. The hope that 
in a struggle with the Government an opposition 
party might fall to pieces at the critical moment 
has nearly always proved deceptive. After our 
party system had passed through the first stage of 
ferment, which no young political system is spared, 
and had become clarified by early changes and modifica- 
tions, the parties acquired remarkable solidarity. How 
often it has been foretold that a party would split into 
so-called "modern" and "old" factions. Such fore- 
casts have hardly ever been fulfilled. 

Nowhere in our political life do we find such stead- 
fast conservatism as in our parties. Even the most radical 
factions are thoroughly conservative as regards the 
planks in their platform and their methods. This in- 
ertia of party politics goes so far that the parties still 
cling to their old demands even when the general 
development of public affairs has rendered their fulfil- 
ment absolutely impossible. 

The valiant loyalty of the German to his cause and 
his party leader is in itself beautiful and touching, 

175 



Imperial Germany 

morally deserving of respect as is all loyalty. Politics 
amongst us actually show a moral quality in this 
matter, whereas a well-known popular saying denies 
all possibility of morality in politics. But if we do 
discuss morality in politics, the question may well be 
raised whether, after all, there is not a higher form of 
political morality. All honour to loyalty in the service 
of the party, loyalty to principles and to leaders; but 
to serve one's country is better than to serve one's 
party. Parties do not exist for their own sakes, but 
for the common weal. The highest political morality 
is patriotism. A sacrifice of party convictions, dis- 
loyalty even to the party programme in the interest 
of the Empire, is more praiseworthy than party loyalty 
which disregards the general welfare of the country. 
Less party spirit and party loyalty, and more national 
feeling and more public spirit are what we Germans 
need. [May the parties which, in the course of this 
war, have all given elevating proofs of their love and 
loyalty to their country, continue after the war to place 
national feeling above party feeling, and public spirit 
above party loyalty !] 



176 



CHAPTER XIII 

DANGERS OF PARTY POLITICS 

Happily history proves that no party can per- 
manently oppose national interests with impunity. 
Even the short history of German party politics fur- 
nishes instances. Liberalism, in spite of its change 
of attitude in national questions, has to this day not 
recovered from the catastrophic defeat which Prince 
Bismarck inflicted nearly half a century ago on the 
party of progress which still clung to the ideas and 
principles of 1848. 

But epochs like that of 1866-187 1, in which the 
soul of the nation was stirred to its depths, and judg- 
ment was pronounced so clearly and so pitilessly on 
political error, are as rare as they are great. The 
ordinary course of political development, as a rule, very 
slowly brings to light the results of mistaken party 
politics. Self-criticism and reflection must take the 
place of experience. It is easier for parties in other 
countries. In States where the parliamentary system 
obtains, parties are relieved of the difficult if noble 
task of educating themselves, the task imposed on our 
parties. In such countries a mistake in party politics 
is immediately followed by defeat and painful correction. 

I do not wish hereby to advocate the parliamentary 
system as it is understood in the west of Europe. 
The worth of a Constitution does not depend on the 
M 177 



Imperial Germany 

way it reacts on the party system. Constitutions do 
not exist for parties, but for the State. Considering 
the peculiarities of our Government, the parliamentary 
system would not be a suitable form of Constitution 
for us. 

Where the Parliamentary system proves of value, 
and that is by no means everywhere, the strength of 
the Government is based on the strength and value, 
on the political broad-mindedness and statesmanlike 
ability of the parties. There the parties formed the 
Constitution in the course of their own foundation and 
development as in England, as also in a certain sense 
in Republican France. In Germany the monarchical 
Governments are the supporters and creators of the 
Constitution. The parties are secondary formations, 
which could only grow in the soil of an existing State. 
We lack the preliminary conditions, both natural and 
historical, for a parliamentary system. 

But the knowledge of this need not prevent us 
from seeing the advantages which this system gives to 
other States. Just as there is no absolutely perfect 
Constitution, so there is no absolutely defective one. 
The oft-repeated attempts, especially in France, to com- 
bine all the advantages of all possible Constitutions 
have hitherto always failed. While we realise this we 
need not shut our eyes to many advantages of Consti- 
tutions abroad. 

In countries ruled by Parliament, the great parties 
and groups of parties acquire their political education 
by having to govern. When a party has gained a 
majority, and has provided the leading statesmen from 
its ranks, it has the opportunity of putting its politi- 

178 



Party Responsibilities 

cal opinions into practice. [Thus it has the opportunity 
of convincing itself of the relativity of party pro- 
grammes, party aspirations and party opinions.] If it 
pursues a theoretical or extreme course, if it sacrifices 
the common weal to party interests and party principles, 
if it has the folly to want to carry out its party pro- 
gramme undiluted and in full, it will lose its majority 
at the next elections and will be driven from office by 
the opposition. The party that must govern is re- 
sponsible, not only for its own welfare, but in a higher 
degree for that of the nation and the State. Party 
interests and national interests coincide. But as it 
is not possible to govern a State for long in a one- 
sided fashion in accordance with some party pro- 
gramme, the party in office will moderate its demands 
in order not to lose its paramount influence over the 
country. The parties in a country governed by Parlia- 
ment possess a salutary corrective that we lack, in the 
prospect of having to rule themselves, and the neces- 
sity of being able to do so. 

In States not governed by Parliament the parties 
feel that their primary vocation is to criticise. They 
feel no obligation worth mentioning, to moderate their 
demands, or any great responsibility for the conduct 
of public affairs. As they never have to prove the 
practical value of their opinions urbi et orhi, they mostly 
content themselves with manifesting the immutability 
of their convictions. "A great deal of conviction, and 
very little feeling of responsibility." That is how a 
witty journalist once described our German party 
system to me, and he added: "Our parties do not 
feel as if they were the actors who perform in the play, 

179 



Imperial Germany 

but as if they were the critics who look on. They 
award praise and blame, but they do not feel as if they 
themselves participated in what goes on. The chief 
thing is to supply the voters at home with a strong 
and, if possible, welcome opinion." 

Once, during the Boer War, standing in the lobby 
of the Reichstag, I remonstrated with one of the mem- 
bers on account of his attacks on England, which did 
not exactly tend to make our difficult position any 
easier. The worthy man replied in a tone of convic- 
tion : " It is my right and my duty, as a member of 
the Reichstag, to express the feelings of the German 
nation. You, as Minister,, will, I hope, take care 
that my feelings do no mischief abroad.*' I do not 
think that such a remark, the naivete of which dis- 
armed me, would have been possible in any other 
country. 

There is nothing to be said against expressions of 
feeling in politics, so long as they stop short of injur- 
ing the interests of the State. They belong to the 
class of imponderables in political life, that men like 
Bismarck valued highly. Particularly in Germany, 
the feelings of the people have often acted as a whole- 
some corrective to preconceived political opinions. 
In foreign politics, feelings, sympathies and antipathies 
are unreliable sign-posts, and we should not have gone 
very far if our leading statesmen had consulted their 
hearts rather than their heads in shaping the course of 
foreign relations. 

In the field of home politics it is a different thing, 
especially for us Germans. One is tempted to wish that 
in that case political feelings and sentiments had more 

i8o 



A Tender-Hearted People 

than their actual influence, and political intelligence 
less. For the effect of German political intelligence is 
not to moderate the desires of party politics, nor to 
adapt their political demands to existing circumstances. 
Our political intelligence urges us to systematise and 
schematise the realities of political life; not to adjust 
things in a sensible way to the existing political facts 
and conditions, but to arrange these in a logically cor- 
rect sequence of thought. 

We Germans are, on the one hand, a sentimental, 
tender-hearted people, and are prone always, perhaps 
too much so, to follow the dictates of our heart against 
our better judgment. But, on the other hand, our 
passion for logic amounts to fanaticism, and wherever 
an intellectual formula or a system has been found 
for anything, we insist with obstinate perseverance on 
fitting realities into the system. 

The individual German shows both these sides of 
his nature in private life, the nation shows them in 
public life, and many a curious phenomenon in the 
present, as in the past, may be explained by this 
duality of character. We like to consider foreign 
politics, which are connected with a long series of pain- 
ful and pleasurable national events, from the emotional 
standpoint. Transactions in home politics, which the 
nation grasped clearly in a comparatively short space 
of time, have become a recognised field for intellectual 
theories, for systematic examination and classification. 

A German rarely applies the methods of modern 
science to politics, he mostly employs those of the old 
speculative philosophers. He does not attach im- 
portance to confronting Nature with open eyes and to 

i8i 



Imperial Germany 

observing what has happened, what is happening, and 
therefore what can and necessarily will happen again 
in the future. Rather, he grows intent upon finding 
out how things ought to have developed, and what 
they ought to have been like, for everything to har- 
monise with nice logic and for the system to come 
into its own. Their programmes are not adapted to 
reality; reality is to adjust itself to the programmes, 
and, what is more, not only in single instances, but 
altogether. Most of the German party programmes, if 
you consider them with an eye to their logic and 
systematic perfection, are extremely praiseworthy and 
redound to the credit of German thoroughness and 
logical conscientiousness. But, judged by the standard 
of practicability, not one will pass muster. 

Politics are life, and, like all life, will adhere to no 
rule. Modern politics are conditioned by events far 
back in our history, where the primary causes, whose 
effects we still feel, are lost in a mist of conjectures. 
But political practice would gain nothing by a complete 
knowledge of all causes and limitations. We should 
learn only how a multitude of things have come about, 
but not what must be done to-day or to-morrow. 
Nearly every day brings new facts and new problems 
which require new decisions, just as in the lives of 
individual men. Nor does the labour demanded by the 
day and by the hour see the end of our task. We must, 
as far as lies in the power of our understanding and 
ability, take thought for the future. Of what assist- 
ance, then, are the regulations of a programme drawn 
up at a certain moment, however uniform and logical 
it be ? 

182 



Party Programmes 

The varied life of a nation, ever changing, ever 
growing more complicated, cannot be stretched or 
squeezed to fit a programme or a political principle. 
Of course, the parties must draw up in the form of a 
programme the demands and ideas they represent, so 
as to make it clear to the country, especially at election 
time, what are their aims and principles. Without a 
programme, a party would be an unknown quantity. 
But when a programme, drawn up to serve the im- 
mediate and future aims of party politics, is petrified 
into a system for all politics in general, it becomes 
objectionable. 

There are many and often conflicting interests 
among the people, and the representatives of like 
interests are quite right to band themselves together 
and formulate their demands. The formula is the pro- 
gramme. There are different opinions about State, Law 
and Society, about the regulation of public life, especi- 
ally in respect of the distribution of political rights 
between the people and the Government. Those, also, 
who represent similar views will join together and ex- 
press their opinions in a few distinctive propositions. 
These propositions constitute the programme. The con- 
nection between industrial life and political life often 
causes the representatives of like interests to hold like 
political opinions. Their programme will be propor- 
tionately more comprehensive. It may also be admitted 
that the two concrete, historical views of State and 
Society — the Conservative and the Liberal — and the 
two abstract, dogmatic views — the Ultramontane and 
the Social-Democratic — embrace a large number of 
the facts of political life. The respective party pro- 

183 



Imperial Germany 

grammes can therefore go into detail accordingly. But 
here, too, there is a limit. A large number of events in 
public life cannot be included even in these compara- 
tively comprehensive programmes, nor can Conserva- 
tives and Liberals hold absolutely opposed views with 
respect to them. 

On the whole, there is a preponderance of such 
legislative problems as deal with questions of pure 
utility, which must be solved by political common 
sense, and cannot be weighed in the scales of general 
party views. But such disregard of party programmes 
is rarely conceded, even to the details of legislation. It 
does not suffice us Germans to confine our party poli- 
tics to a certain number of practical demands and 
political opinions. Each party would like to imbue 
politics as a whole with its views, even down to the 
smallest detail. And this is not limited to politics. The 
parties would like to be distinguished from one another 
even in their grasp of intellectual and their conception 
of practical life. Party views are to become a " Welt- 
anschauung " (Conception of the Universe). Herein 
they over-estimate political and under-estimate intellec- 
tual life. 

The German nation in particular has been more 
deeply and seriously moved by the great problems of 
a conception of the Universe than any other nation. 
It has often, probably too often for its practical in- 
terests, subordinated dry questions of policy to the battle 
about the conception of the Universe. On the other 
hand, it was the first nation to set intellectual life free 
from political tutelage. If now it subordinates this 
conception to party politics, if it wants to go so far 

184 



"Conception of the Universe '• 

as to see every event in the world and in life in the 
dismal light of political party principles, it will be 
false to itself. The attempt to widen the scope of 
politics, and especially party politics, in this way must 
lead to an intellectual decline, and has perhaps already 
done so. A political conception of the Universe is 
nonsense, for luckily the world is not everywhere 
political. And a conception of the Universe founded 
on party politics cannot even span the political world, 
because there are far too many matters and questions 
in politics that lie outside the sphere of party plat- 
forms and party principles. 

An English friend once said to me that it struck him 
how often the word ** Weltanschauung " (Conception 
of the Universe) occurred in the German parliamentary 
speeches. Over and over again he found, "From the 
point of view of my conception of the Universe, I cannot 
approve of this, and I must demand that." He asked 
me to explain to him what German party politicians 
meant by ** Weltanschauung " and then remarked, as he 
shook his head, that English politicians and members 
of Parliament did not know much about such things. 
They had different opinions and represented different 
interests, pursued different objects; but they only 
argued on practical grounds and rarely touched on 
such high matters as the conception of the Universe. 

When we try to make of party principles a system 
by which to judge all political and non-political life, 
we harm ourselves politically and intellectually. 
Politically, we only intensify the differences which in 
any case we feel particularly keenly, because we attri- 
bute a special intellectual value to them, and we reduce 

185 



Imperial Germany 

more and more the number of those tasks in public 
life which really can be carried out much better with- 
out the bias of party politics. But if we drag questions 
ot intellectual life into the realm of party politics, that 
will mean the loss of that intellectual versatility and 
magnanimity which have won for German culture the 
first place in the civilised world. 

In Germany a politician or a statesman is very 
quickly reproached with lack of principle if, under pres- 
sure of shifting conditions, he changes an opinion he 
used to hold, or approves of the views of more than 
one party. But development takes place without 
reference to party platforms or principles. If forced 
to choose between sacrificing an opinion and doing a 
foolish thing, the practical man will prefer the former 
alternative. At any rate, no Minister, who is respon- 
sible to the nation for his decisions, can afford to 
indulge in the luxury of a preconceived opinion, when 
it is a question of fulfilling a legitimate demand of the 
times. And if, then, it is pointed out that there is a 
contradiction between his present view and his earlier 
expressions of opinion, I can only advise him to pro- 
tect himself against the reproach of being inconsis- 
tent, a turncoat, a weathercock, and whatever the other 
catchwords of vulgar polemics may be, by acquiring a 
thick skin, which is in any case a useful thing to have 
in modern public life. 

It is a fact confirmed by all experience that the true 
interests of the nation have never been found in the 
course of one particular party alone. They always lie 
midway between the courses pursued by various parties. 
We must draw the diagonal of the parallelogram of 

i86 



Lack of Political Principles 

forces. It will sometimes tend more in the direction 
of one party and sometimes in that of another. A Min- 
ister, whatever party he may incline to personally, 
must try to find a compromise between all the legitimate 
demands made by the various parties. In the course 
of a fairly long term of office, little by little, and as his 
tasks vary, he will, of course, be attacked by all parties. 
But that does not matter so long as the State prospers. 

I never took the reproach of lack of political prin- 
ciple tragically; I have even, at times, felt it to savour 
of praise, for I saw in it appreciation of the fact that I 
was guided by reasons of State. The political principles 
which a Minister has to live up to are very different in 
character from the principles recognised by a party 
man ; they belong to the sphere of State policy, not of 
party politics. A Minister must be loyal to the general 
interests of the State and of the people which are en- 
trusted to his care, and this w^ithout considering party 
platforms, and, if necessary, in opposition to all parties, 
even to that with which the majority of his political 
views are in accordance. 

In a Minister, firm principles and impartiality are 
not only compatible, they are interdependent. Bis- 
marck was a man of iron principles, and by being 
true to them he led our country to unity, glory and 
greatness. As a Member of Parliament he was a party 
man, and as Minister he was reproached by his party 
for a political change of front. He was accused ten 
years later of again changing his opinions. As a 
matter of fact, he never swerved from the path which 
led to his goal, for his goal was nothing less than to 
secure prosperity and every possible advantage for the 

187 



Imperial Germany 

German nation and the Empire. This goal could not 
be attained on party lines, for the interests of the com- 
munity in general seldom, if ever, coincide with those 
of a single party. 

Universally applicable rules for the best possible 
policy cannot well be drawn up. Political ends and 
political means vary with circumstances, and one must 
not slavishly imitate any model, not even the greatest. 
In as far as varied and chequered life can be summed 
up in a formula, for politics it would run as follows : 
Fanatical where the welfare and interests of the country 
and where reasons of State are in question, idealistic 
in aim, realistic in political practice, sceptical, as far 
as men, their trustworthiness and gratitude are con- 
cerned. 



i88 



CHAPTER XIV 

POLITICAL AIMS AND DISCORDS 

I HAVE never concealed the fact, even from Liberals, 
that in many great questions of politics I share the 
views of the Conservatives. In the same way I have 
never denied the fact that I am not a Conservative 
party man. As a responsible Minister I could not be 
that, given the character of my office and our German 
conditions. I discuss here what my personal reasons 
are for not being a party man, although I consider 
myself a Conservative in all essentials, because the 
consideration of these reasons leads to concrete ques- 
tions of German politics at the present time and in 
the immediate past. 

There is a distinct difference between State Con- 
servatism that the Government can pursue and party 
Conservatism that no Government in Germany can 
adhere to without falling into a state of partisanship 
which, in all circumstances, must prove fatal. In other 
words : The policy of the Government can go hand in 
hand with the policy of the Conservatives, so long as 
the latter is in accordance with the true interests of 
the State. That was frequently the case, and will often 
be the case in the future. But the ways of the Govern- 
ment and the Conservatives must diverge, if the 
policy of the party is not in accordance with the in- 
terests of the community which the Government must 

189 



Imperial Germany 

protect. At the same time, the Government can be 
more conservative towards the party than the party 
towards the Government. More conservative in the 
sense that it fulfils more perfectly the special task of 
upholding the State. In such situations Prince Bis- 
marck, too, who was a Conservative consciously and 
by conviction, came into bitter conflict with his former 
party friends. It is well known that he dealt in detail 
with this very point, both in his "Gedanken und 
Erinnerungen " ("Reflections and Reminiscences") 
and in the conversations which Poschinger has trans- 
mitted to us. 

The task of Conservative policy was once aptly 
defined by Count Posadowsky in the following way : 
That Conservatives must maintain the State in such 
a way that the people are content in it. Such a main- 
tenance of the State is often unimaginable without the 
alteration of existing institutions. The State must 
adjust itself to the requirements of modern conditions of 
life in order to remain habitable and consequently 
vigorous. 

It would be very unjust to deny that the Conser- 
vative party has often assisted in introducing innova- 
tions; sometimes, indeed, with a better grace than 
those parties which have " Progress " inscribed on their 
banner. This was the case in the year 1878, when in- 
dustrial conditions necessitated the great revolution in 
tariffs and industrial policy. Again, at the inaugura- 
tion of the social policy which took into account the 
changed conditions of the labouring classes. [It was 
Herr Heydebrand too, the Conservative leader, who was 
the first party leader during this war to express himself 

190 



The Conservative Party 

in a conciliatory fashion, uttering the following wise 
words : 

" It would be a tremendous gain if, in consequence of 
this struggle, many of the grudges we bore each other 
in the past should finally disappear. No doubt 
economic, social and professional antagonism will re- 
main, but we can and must alter our attitude to one 
another. Many a thing that we had thought impos- 
sible has now been recognised as an essential truth, 
and after this baptism of blood and fire, even when 
we criticise or blame, we must realise that our relations 
to one another are changed. We shall never forget 
that our opponent once helped to defend the German 
Fatherland. That alone must be a blessing for our 
German nation."] 

Owning to the intensification of economic differences, 
the Conservative party, like all others, has, in a cer- 
tain sense, come to represent special interests. I will 
not discuss the point whether this was the case to such 
an extent as to be bad for the party. But no one who 
has sat on the Ministerial Bench during the last decades 
will be prepared to deny that now and then it was true 
to a greater extent than was favourable to the course of 
the Government's affairs. 

[I had to oppose the Conservative party, as in the 
past I had opposed others, when I was convinced that 
its standpoint was irreconcilable with the interests of the 
community in general.] In the fight over the Tariff the 
interests of the nation in general were identical with 
those of the Conservative party; but in the reform of 
the Imperial finances they were not. The subsequent 
development in both cases prov^ this to be true. 

19^ 



Imperial Germany 

Nothing in the fundamental views of the Conservative 
party in respect of the organisation of society, indus- 
tries and, above all, of the State ever separated me 
from it in the days of which I am speaking, nor does 
it do so to-day. 

We must never fail to appreciate what the Con- 
servative element has achieved for the political life of 
Prussia and Germany. It would be a sad loss to the 
nation if Conservative views ceased to be a living and 
effective force among the Germans, and if the party 
ceased to occupy a position m parliamentary and 
political life which is worthy of its past. The forces 
which animate the Conservative party are those which 
made Prussia and Germany great, and which our 
country must preserve in order to remain great and grow 
greater ; they are forces which never become out of date. 
We Germans must not lose the ideals of the best Con- 
servatism : manly loyalty without servility to the King 
and the reigning family, and tenacious attachment to 
home and country. 

If, nowadays, the opponents of the Conservative 
party are not content to fight them on the ground of 
party differences, but manifest class-hatred, always so 
objectionable in political life, against those classes of 
the nation which are chiefly represented in the Con- 
servative party, we must not forget what those very 
classes did in the service of Prussia and Germany. It 
was the "Junker" and peasants east of the Elbe who, 
under the Hohenzollern princes, primarily achieved 
greatness for Brandenburg-Prussia. The throne of the 
Prussian Kings is cemented with the blood of the 
Prussian nobility. The Great King (Frederick the 

192 



The Junker 

Great) expressed emphatically more than once what he 
owed to his Junkers. 

The praise which the Prussian nobility demand, 
and which they have a perfect right to expect, is not 
meant to detract from the achievements and merits of 
other classes. Without the self-sacrificing loyalty of 
the middle classes, the peasants and the poor people, 
the nobility would have accomplished little. It is quite 
true, too, that the nobles were able to distinguish 
themselves particularly in earlier times, because the 
conditions at that period gave them exceptional oppor- 
tunities. But it was when they occupied posts of re- 
sponsibility and danger in the service of the Prussian 
State that they achieved most — more than the aris- 
tocracy of any other modern State. Nothing but 
injustice can fail to recognise this. [And those who live 
now know in what full measure the Prussian aristoc- 
racy has borne its share in this war, rendering the 
highest military services and shedding their blood for 
the country.^] 

It is altogether preposterous, nowadays, still to 
contrast the Junker and the bourgeoisie as separate 
castes. Professional and social life have so fused the 
old classes that they can no longer be distinguished 
from each other. 

But if one appreciates at its true value the efficiency 
of the old classes in the past, one must be just and 
concede the merits of each. The Prussian nobles have 
a right to be proud of their past. If they keep the 
sentiments of their ancestors, who made Prussia great, 
alive in the ideals of the Conservative party, they 
deserve thanks for so doing. And it must not be 
N 193 



Imperial Germany 

forgotten that such old Prussian sentiments guided 
the policy of the Conservative party in the most 
difficult times of our old Emperor and his great 
Minister, in the years of conflict. So far as one 
can speak of a right to gratitude in politics — ^and 
one ought to be able to do so — we owe the Con- 
servatives a debt of gratitude for the support they 
afforded Bismarck in the year 1862. I lay particular 
stress on this, because at the time my official career 
was nearing its close I was forced to oppose the Con- 
servative party. I should like to make a clear dis- 
tinction between my general attitude towards Conser- 
vative views, my sentiments towards the Conservative 
party, and my opinion of individual phases of Conser- 
vative party politics. 

Even a man who esteems the fundamental views of 
the Conservatives as highly as I do, who, like me, 
hopes that sound Conservative thought will have a 
far-reaching influence on legislation, and who has often 
furthered such influence, must be of opinion that 
disastrous consequences will result from the fact that 
in 1909 the bridges between the Right and Left were 
broken down. [The really fruitful periods of our home 
policy were those when the Conservatives and Liberals 
were not fundamentally hostile to one another, but tried 
to modify their respective political demands so as to 
avoid a complete break.] In saying this I refer, not only 
to the time of the so-called "Block Policy," but also to 
earlier, well-known and significant phases of Bismarck's 
time. 

Conservatism and Liberalism are not only both 
justified, but are both necessary for our political life. 

194 



Liberalism 

How difficult it is to rule in our country is made clear 
by the facts that one cannot rule in Prussia for any 
length of time without the support of the Conservatives, 
nor in the Empire without that of the Liberals. Neither 
must Liberal ideas disappear from us as a people. 
Moreover, the formation of strong Liberal parties is 
indispensable to us. If Conservatism is rooted in the 
administrative talent of the old Prussians, Liberalism 
is rooted in the intellectual peculiarities of the German 
nation. Its best ideals, too, are of permanent value. 
We Germans do not want to be deprived of the lusty 
defence of individual freedom against State coercion, 
and this Liberalism has always represented. 

Liberalism, too, has earned its historic rights and 
its right to gratitude. It was the Liberals who first 
expressed the idea of German Unity, and spread it 
through the people. They carried out the indispensable 
preliminary work. The goal could not be reached by 
the course which they followed. Then Conservative 
policy had to step in, in order, as Bismarck expressed 
it, to realise the Liberal idea by means of a Conserva- 
tive action. The German Empire itself may well be 
regarded as the first, the greatest, and the most success- 
ful piece of work accomplished by the co-operation of 
the Conservatives and Liberals. 

Before the war it was customary in both camps to 
look upon Conservatism and Liberalism as two funda- 
mentally opposed conceptions of the State, and to assert 
that each lives on its antagonism to the other. That 
does not, however, correctly interpret the relationship 
between German Conservatives and Liberals. If it 
were true, the two parties, and the groups which are 

^95 



Imperial Germany 

attached to them, would have to gain in strength the 
stronger became the contrast between them, and the 
more hostile the attitude they adopted towards each 
other. 

But the exact opposite is the case. With the excep- 
tion of a few extraordinary situations, the Conservatives 
and Liberals have been strongest as parties and most 
influential in Parliament when they co-operated. [The 
co-operation of the Conservatives and Liberals in the 
principal ballots and the second ballots resulted in the 
victory gained in January, 1907, over Social Demo- 
cracy. The fact that the Social Democratic seats at 
that time were reduced, and could be reduced, from 
81 to 43, was not merely significant for this single 
electoral campaign, but was of far more general im- 
portance. A comparison between the results of the 
elections in 1907 and in 191 2 clearly proves this. Con- 
servatives and Liberals, when they joined forces, de- 
feated Social Democracy, but acting independently they 
were beaten by the latter.] 

Of the 69 constituencies which the Social Democrats 
gained in the January elections of 19 12, no fewer than 
66 had returned Conservatives or Liberals in 1907 ; 29 
had fallen to the share of the Conservatives and their 
neighbours, and 37 to the Liberal parties. The elec- 
tions of 1907 inflicted the severest loss that the Social 
Democrats had experienced since the founding of the 
Reichstag; the elections of 191 2 brought them the 
greatest gain. The parties of the Right fell from 
113 seats that they had won in 1907 to 69 in 1912. 
That is the smallest number of members of the Right 
since the year 1874. The number of Liberals in the 

196 



The Centre 

Reichstag after the elections of 19 12 was lower than 
ever before. At the elections of 1907, for the first time, 
Conservatives and Liberals of all shades of opinion 
were united for one cause. The elections of 191 2 saw for 
the first time a close coalition of all the parties of the 
Left. In 1907 the Right emerged from the elections 
as the strongest group, numbering 113 members as 
against 106 Liberals, 105 representatives of the Centre, 
and 43 Socialists. In the year 1912 the Social Demo- 
crats became the strongest party in the Reichstag, 
with no members, while there were 90 representatives 
of the Centre, 85 Liberals, and 69 Conservatives of all 
shades of opinion. 

No doubt we must not expect all political salvation, 
or the solution of all legislative problems, to result 
from co-operation between Conservatives and Liberals. 
It will happen again and again that their ways part 
as regards individual, and also important, questions. 
For the antagonism exists, and rightly so. It would 
also be quite wrong to credit the co-operation of Con- 
servatives and Liberals with all great achievements in 
the sphere of home politics. The Centre played a 
distinguished and often a decisive part in our social 
legislation, in many of our Armament Bills, and, above 
all, in granting us the navy. But strife between the 
Conservatives and the Liberals has always been disas- 
trous — for the two parties themselves, for the course 
of our home policy, and, last but not least, for the 
temper of the nation. 

The antagonism between Liberals and Conserva- 
tives will never disappear. It has an historical and a 
practical significance. This friction is a part of our 

197 



Imperial Germany 

political life. But the antagonism in their views should 
not be exaggerated unnecessarily, nor made to involve 
such great matters as utterly irreconcilable concep- 
tions of the Universe. In so doing one departs from 
sober political reality. Even religious antagonism, 
which has been amongst us for four centuries, and 
which the nation, in accordance with its disposition, 
has always taken very seriously, makes way for the 
demands of the moment. 

In Socialism we really have a series of ideas, so 
different from our homely conceptions of Law and 
Custom, Religion, Society and State that it may indeed 
be termed a different conception of the Universe. I 
myself, in this connection, once spoke of a difference 
in the conception of the Universe. 

No one seriously believes, however, that a middle- 
class Liberal differs from a middle-class Conservative 
in his conception of the Universe. They have too many 
common ideas and ideals, especially in national matters, 
and the wide kingdom of German intellectual life in 
Science and in Art belongs to them both. How many 
Liberals there are who incline to individual Conserva- 
tive views ! How many Conservatives who are by no 
means opposed to all Liberal ideas and demands ! All 
these people do not consider themselves politically 
neutral, nor are they. 

And what about the Ministers? The party papers 
quarrel at regular intervals whether this particular 
Minister or that is to be considered as a Conserva- 
tive or as a Liberal, and as a rule each party tries 
to foist the majority of Ministers on to the opposing 
party. The fact is that, if asked to state precisely to 

198 



Ministers Above Party 

which party platform they give their support, most 
Ministers would be at a loss. 

It is not only unjustifiable, but also unpractical, to 
emphasise unduly the differences between the parties. 
[It is a bad habit of the Germans, and one of long 
standing, in cases of differences on the subject of home 
politics to exaggerate quite unduly, and to treat indivi- 
dual, political or economic questions as if the weal or 
woe of the country depended on them, whereas the 
matter in question can often be decided in either way 
without doing any appreciable harm. Much would be 
gained if in future, in home politics, old Thiers' saying 
were taken to heart: ^^ Donner a chaque chose sa juste 
valeur,"^] They do not, as a rule, go hand in hand for 
any length of time, and the bonds that unite them are 
anything but permanent. So if they break with their 
friends of yesterday, and become reconciled to their 
enemies of yesterday, they are placed in the awkward 
position of having to break down the carefully con- 
structed fabric of fundamental party differences, with 
as much trouble as they expended in building it up. 
This has happened just about as often as the composi- 
tion of the majority changed. 

If party differences really went so deep, and per- 
meated so completely every detail of political life as is 
represented in party quarrels, then, considering the 
number of our parties, none of which has hitherto 
obtained an absolute majority, it would be impossible 
to accomplish any legislative work. 

But, as a matter of fact, much valuable work of 
different kinds has been done in almost every depart- 

' Estimate each thing at its proper value. 
199 



Imperial Germany 

ment of home politics during the last decades. One 
after the other, the parties have placed themselves 
at each other's disposal, and have often, with astound- 
ing suddenness, overcome the differences they empha- 
sised so strongly before. No doubt other differences 
are emphasised all the more strongly. And this only 
lasts until the formation of a new majority, so that 
really there is no occasion to take the antagonism 
between the parties so tragically. 

The Government must also look upon party 
antagonism as a variable quantity. Not only as a 
quantity variable in itself, but as one whose variability 
can and must be influenced, if the interests of the 
Empire and the State demand it. It is not sufficient to 
take majorities wherever they are to be found and as 
occasion offers. The Government must try to create 
majorities for its tasks. 

To govern with a majority which varies in each 
case is no doubt advantageous and convenient, but 
there are great dangers attached to it. It is certainly 
not a panacea for all political situations. 

Bismarck is usually cited as having taken his 
majorities where he could get them. But in this, as 
in most references to the time of Bismarck, the point 
is missing — Bismarck himself at the head of the Govern- 
ment. He held the reins of government with such an 
iron grip that he never ran any risk of letting the least 
Bcrap of power slip into the hands of Parliament 
through the influence he conceded to a majority, when 
he happened to find one at his disposal. Above all, he 
never dreamt of considering the wishes of a majority 
unless they tallied with his own. He made use of 

200 



Bismarck's Way 

existing majorities, but he never let them make use 
of him. Bismarck in particular excelled in ridding 
himself of antagonistic majorities and in procuring 
such as would acquiesce in the aims of his policy. If 
his choice lay between allowing an important law to 
be blocked or mangled by an existing majority and 
engaging in a troublesome fight to effect a change of 
majority, he never hesitated to choose the latter. He 
profited by the possibility of getting casual majorities, 
but he was the last to yield to them when he had got 
them. 

In this respect Bismarck's name should not be idly 
cited. His rule can only serve as a precedent for a 
strong, determined and even ruthless Government, not 
for an accommodating and yielding one that concedes 
greater rights to the parties than they are entitled to 
claim. [Prince Bismarck, who as Imperial Chancellor 
more than once characterised fear of responsibility as 
the malady of the statesmen of our time, said in the 
'nineties to Hermann Hofmann, the chief editor of the 
Hamburger Nachrichten, " No Government is so in- 
jurious to the interests of a country as a weak one."] 

It is certainly less trouble to look on and see how a 
majority can be got together for a Bill, than to see that 
the Bill is passed in the way the Government thinks 
proper and profitable. The method of, so to speak, 
offering a Bill in the open market and making a compact 
with the highest bidder will only do when a Government 
is as strong, and at the same time as clever, as that of 
Bismarck's. Above all, this can only be done when the 
Bill itself is accepted by the majority in the form which 
the Government have proposed and which they desire, 

20I 



Imperial Germany 

I.e. when the lead is kept in the hands of the Govern- 
ment. 

If the Government allows itself to be led, then it 
may easily happen that, what with the feuds of the 
parties and the haggling between the sections which 
make up the majority, the Bill will become unrecognis- 
able and something quite different will result — at times 
even just the contrary to what the Government wanted. 
In this way the majorities are not put at the disposal 
of the Bills that the Government introduces as oppor- 
tunity affords, but the Government give their Bills up 
to the majorities to pass and amend as they think best. 
While the Government pretends to be above the parties, 
in reality it slips under their heel. 

The very necessity for changing the majorities, in 
view of the state of the parties in Germany, demands 
a strong hand to direct the affairs of the Government. 
No Government can work for ever with one and the 
same majority. That is rendered impossible by the 
relations which the parties bear to one another, by the 
dogmatism of most parties, by their tendency to go 
over to the opposition from time to time in order to 
gain popularity, and, finally, by the manifold nature 
of the Government's tasks, which can only in part be 
accomplished by one particular majority. 

In the interests of a policy which as far as possible 
does justice to all sections of the nation, it is not desir- 
able that any one of the parties, with whose assistance 
positive work for the good of the State can be done, 
should never co-operate. It is good for the parties if 
they have a share in legislative work. Parties which 
always preserve an attitude of opposition and negation, 

202 



The Ultra-Liberals 

and are left alone by the Government, become fossilised 
in the items of their programmes, and, if they do not 
die out altogether, at best deprive our public life of 
valuable forces. In the course of the last decades the 
Left Wing of our Liberalism had fallen into this con- 
dition, even with regard to vital questions of national 
importance. The problem of enrolling Ultra-Liberal- 
ism in positive co-operation, especially in military and 
Colonial matters, had to be tackled. It was solved by 
the "Block Policy," and this solution not only proved 
satisfactory during the existence of the Block, but lasted 
longer, for shortly before the outbreak of the world war 
the Ultra-Liberals helped to procure a very substantial 
increase in the army. 

The formation of the group of parties which goes 
by the somewhat unfortunate name of the "Block," a 
term borrowed from French politicians, was an event 
of extraordinary and typical significance, and was 
most enlightening. [If I hark back to these events here, 
it is not that I wish to recall former differences of 
opinion at a time when the nation shows a united front 
to its enemies.] Nor do I mean to recommend the Block 
as a panacea for any and every contingency in home 
politics. I was always well aware that such a combina- 
tion must be of limited duration, because, for one thing, 
it never entered my calculations that the Centre would 
permanently be excluded. 

The Centre is the strong bastion built by the Roman 
Catholic section of the people to protect itself from 
interference on the part of the Protestant majority. The 
previous history of the Centre may be traced back to 
the times when in the old Empire the Corpus Evangelic- 

203 



Imperial Germany 

orum was opposed by the Corpus Catholicorum. But 
whereas in the old Empire Catholicism and Protes- 
tantism were more or less evenly balanced, in the new 
Empire the Catholics are in the minority; the old 
Catholic Empire has been succeeded by the new Pro- 
testant one. [Of course by this I do not intend to convey 
that the rule of the House of Hohenzollern is of a 
denominational character; I merely wish to point out 
that in the old Empire all those who successively wore 
the Imperial crown, and more especially the family of 
the Habsburgs, which for more than five hundred years 
wore the crown of the Holy Roman Empire, belonged 
to the Catholic Church, that in the new Empire the 
family of the Hohenzollern are members of the Evan- 
gelical Church, and that after the foundation of the new 
Empire this fact disquieted the Catholic section of the 
German people. 

The Hohenzollern are the first great reigning family 
in Europe who have taken the principle of equal 
religious rights seriously, and the more they have 
shown that it is foreign to their character to favour one 
particular form of religion, and the longer they fulfil 
their high office in a spirit of true justice and tolerance, 
the more surely will the fears of the Catholic minority 
vanish.] It must, however, be admitted that this 
minority has a great advantage over the Protestant 
majority in its unity and solidarity. 

Good Protestant as I am, I do not deny that, though 
the Protestants often have reason to complain of lack of 
perception on the part of the Catholics, yet, on the other 
hand, in Protestant circles there is often a lack of 
toleration toward the Catholics. 

204 



Religion in the War 

My old Commander, later General Field-Marshal 
Freiherr von Loe, a good Prussian and a good Catholic, 
once said to me that in this respect matters would not 
improve until the well-known principle of French law, 
"que la recherche de la paterniU etait interdite," were 
changed for us into "la recherche de la confession etait 
inter dite" He also replied to this effect to a foreign 
princess, who asked what was the percentage of Protest- 
ant and Catholic officers in his army corps : *' I know 
how many battalions, squadrons and batteries I com- 
mand, but I take no interest in what church my officers 
belong to." That is what they think in the army, and 
in the diplomatic service, and this manner of thinking 
must hold in other positions as well. 

Members of both religions would do well to take to 
heart the beautiful words of Gorres : *'A11 of us, 
Catholics and Protestants, have sinned in our fathers, 
and still weave the tissue of human error in one way 
or another. No one has the right to set himself above 
another in his pride, and God will tolerate it in none, 
least of all in those who call themselves His friends." 

[In this war Catholics and Protestants have vied 
with each other in heroism and self-sacrifice, in full and 
equal devotion to their Fatherland. As the Evangelical, 
so did the Catholic charitable organisations come for- 
ward in all their greatness. The deaconesses as well as 
the Gray sisters have performed prodigies of heroism 
in their quiet way. A great number of priests belong- 
ing to various orders, among them several Jesuits, have 
received the highest military decoration for their con- 
duct on the field. In spite of attacks from Catholic 
camps abroad, our Catholic compatriots work for the 

205 



Imperial Germany 

German cause in a positively exemplary fashion. And 
the allocations of Benedict XV., inspired as they are 
with the spirit of true Christianity and filled with 
wisdom, have been received on all sides in Germany 
with equal gratitude. 

Every patriot must hope and desire that in future 
times of peace, religious antagonism will remain as 
inconspicuous as it is to-day in time of war. That will 
be all the easier, if complete undenominationalism 
obtains in our intellectual as well as in our public life.] 

The feeling of being slighted, which still exists in 
many Catholic circles, can only be overcome by an 
absolutely undenominational policy, a policy in which, 
as I once expressed it in the Chamber of Deputies, 
there is neither a Protestant nor a Catholic Germany, 
but only the one indivisible nation, indivisible in 
material as in spiritual matters. 

On the other hand, however, there are many weighty 
reasons why a religious party should not wield such an 
extraordinary and decisive influence in politics as was 
the case for many years in this country. The Centre 
is a party held together by religious views, and is the 
representative of the religious minority. As such its 
existence is justified; but it must not arrogate to itself 
a predominant position in politics. Every party which, 
owing to the constitution of the majority and to its own 
strength, occupies an exceptionally strong position in 
Parliament is inclined to abuse its power. The Ultra- 
Liberals did so in the years of struggle; the National 
Liberals in the first half of the 'seventies; the Con- 
servatives in the Prussian Chamber of Deputies, when 
they thwarted the well-thought-out and far-reaching 

206 



A Coalition 

plans for the canal ; and finally the Centre did so. All 
my predecessors in office were from time to time placed 
in the position of having to defend themselves against 
the Centre's claims to power. Many of the conflicts in 
home politics during the last decades had their origin 
in the necessity the Governments were under to defend 
themselves; the conflict of 1887, that of 1893, and, 
finally, the collision of 1906. 

For a party which is in an almost impregnable 
position, such as the Centre occupies, the temptation to 
pursue a policy of power pure and simple was very 
great. It was doubly tempting if the Centre was in a 
position to form a majority together with the Social 
Democrats, and with their help could prevent the pass- 
ing of any and every Bill. A majority composed of 
the Centre and the Social Democrats, which resisted 
justifiable and necessary demands, was not only 
injurious to our national life, but constituted a serious 
danger. 

Before 1906 the Centre allowed itself to be tempted 
to turn to its own advantage the systematic opposition 
of the Social Democrats towards national demands, 
if together with these it could obtain a majority, and 
if it fitted in with its policy of power to discomfit the 
Government by the rejection of such demands. In 
the same way, before the storm which cleared the air 
in 1906, it happened more than once that the Centre 
laid down difficult or even impossible conditions, before 
giving its consent to national demands, knowing full 
well that without its help it was impossible to get a 
national majority. From the defeat of the Cartel at 
the February elections of 1890 up to the Block elections 

207 



Imperial Germany 

of 1907, after which the Centre did not oppose any 
Army, Navy, or Colonial Bills, the Government lived 
uninterruptedly under the shadow of a threat of union 
between the Centre and the Social Democrats, to 
form an Opposition majority. In the seventeen years 
between the Cartel and the Block, the Centre certainly 
rendered valuable services in furthering national affairs, 
especially in respect of the Navy Bills, the Tariff 
Bills, and in a notable manner in the development of 
social policy. But events in the sphere of colonial 
politics in the winter of 1906 proved that the Centre, 
[overstraining its factional claim to power, thought at 
that time that, with the help of Social Democracy, it 
could bring undue pressure to bear on the Government.] 

It was necessary to settle the conflict conjured up 
by the Centre, not only for the time being, but 
with an eye to the past and the future. The need 
of forming a majority for national questions without 
the Centre had really existed since the split in the 
Bismarckian Cartel, and was created by the conclusions 
that the Centre had drawn from the fact that its assist- 
ance was indispensable for the furtherance of national 
affairs. 

It was, then, an old problem that was set for solu- 
tion in 1907, one that was made urgent by the divisions 
of the preceding months, but that was not originally 
raised by them. Not a majority against the Centre, nor 
a majority from which the Centre was to be excluded, 
but a majority powerful and strong enough in itself to 
do justice to national exigencies, if need be without the 
help of the Centre. If this were achieved the Centre 
could no more harbour the seductive idea that it was 

208 



The Block Elections 

indispensable, and the danger of a majority formed by 
the Centre and the Social Democrats would no longer 
be acute. 

When the People's party voted with the Conserva- 
tives and National Liberals for the Colonial Bills, I 
perceived the possibility of forming a new majority, 
I should have seized this opportunity, even if I had 
not been convinced that it was possible to smooth 
away the differences between the Conservatives and 
Liberals, and that the co-operation of these two parties 
would have great educative value. In pursuing this 
course I did my duty. The Block majority was formed 
not against the Centre as such, but against the Centre 
allied in opposition with the Social Democrats. 

The nation looked upon the Block elections as a 
purely national matter. The temper of the people, 
when success was assured, was not such as would be 
roused by a triumph in party politics, but as would 
emanate from a feeling of patriotic satisfaction. The 
Block had been matured by the experience of nearly 
two decades of home policy. There was promise for 
the coming decade in the fact that the last of the 
middle-class parties had been won over [to the side of 
the Government in the great tasks of the Empire. And 
thus the Block policy was an important and indispens- 
able stage in the long and mostly difficult fight that 
the Government had to wage with the German parties 
in order to secure the victory of national ideas.] 

The underlying idea of the so-called Block was 

similar to that which was at the foundation of the 

Cartel. I might almost say : the Block was the modern 

realisation of an old idea adapted to the changed cir- 

o 209 



Imperial Germany 

cumstances of the times. For a long time it had not 
been feasible to repeat the Cartel formed by Conserva- 
tives and National Liberals. The old parties of the 
Cartel had been ground small between the millstones of 
the Centre and the Social Democrats. 

In order to be able, if need be, to dispense with the 
help of the Centre in forming a national majority, it 
was necessary to include Ultra-Liberalism. When in 
1906 the Ultra-Liberals offered to co-operate in national 
work, the Government had to seize the helping hand 
held out to them — ^and hold it fast. It was not so much 
a question of winning over a party to the Government 
side, as of extending the sphere of the national idea 
among the people. For the first time since the found- 
ing of the Empire, the old Ultra-Liberalism [took its 
stand unconditionally upon the ground of our colonial 
policy, our policy of armaments and our world policy.] 

The way in which [Ultra-Liberalism supported the 
Government proposals] hardly left a doubt that the 
change was intended to be permanent rather than tem- 
porary. What Eugen Richter had prophesied to me, 
not long before he retired from political life, had come 
true. With sure instinct, all classes of the nation felt 
and understood the real significance of this turn of 
affairs in 1906, till later on the fads of party programmes 
obscured the clear facts, as they have so often done. 

Since 1907 the Ultra-Liberals have [supported all 
Armament Bills.] The small Army and Navy Bills of 
the spring of 191 2 were accepted by them in the same 
way as were the great increase in the Army in the 
summer of 1913, and the demands of colonial policy. 
To estimate the value of the assistance of the Ultra- 

210 



The Political Balance 

Liberals, it is not sufficient to consider whether the 
Armament Bills would have had a majority in the 
Reichstag without them. The advantage lies in this, 
that whereas formerly a majority of middle-class parties 
stood security for the national needs of the Empire, a 
majority which was mostly got together with great 
difficulty, now all the middle-class parties are opposed 
to the Social Democrats and the Nationalistic parties 
and fragments of parties. 



211 



CHAPTER XV 

ARMAMENTS AND THE REICHSTAG 

The national questions of the Empire have ceased to 
be a subject of anxiety in home politics. And the solid 
force with which the national idea finds expression in all 
sections of the middle classes, when the defence of the 
Empire is concerned, must be set down as a valuable 
asset for the prestige of Germany abroad. 

In order to measure the progress made, it is only 
necessary to consider the fate of the bigger Armament 
Bills during the last decades. This was all the more 
significant as the national idea had to act, not only on 
the lines of the Continental policy of Prussia and 
Germany so glorious in the past, but also on the lines 
of the new world policy, whose importance in the 
meantime lay more in the future. Not only the army, 
but also the navy, was concerned. The middle-class 
parties in the Reichstag had to advocate considerable 
material sacrifices in the country for disbursements for 
national purposes, and they therefore were obliged to 
lay greater stress on the national idea. 

It is certainly a curious fact that in the most military 
and most warlike of the European nations the parties 
have resigned themselves so unwillingly to new de- 
mands for the military power of the Empire, that it has 
taken more than three and a half decades to achieve 
unanimity, at least among the middle-class parties. 

212 



Awakening Latent Patriotism 

The blame for this attitude attaches, not so much to 
lack of patriotism, as to that desire for power in party 
politics, and that obstinate devotion to the party pro- 
gramme, to which I referred above. It was the 
task of the Government to waken the latent patriotic 
feelings of all middle-class parties, to animate them, 
and spontaneously, and without prejudice, to uphold 
them when they seemed strong enough to co-operate in 
a practical manner in the work of the Empire. A Ger- 
man Government would act against the welfare of the 
nation if, owing to party prejudices of its own, it 
should repulse the national zeal of a party, and if the 
sacrifices of a party in the interests of the nation should 
seem of less value because its general trend in politics 
did not fall in with the Government's ideas. 

For the Government the intensity of national feeling 
is by far the most important quality of a party. It will 
and must be possible to work with a party that is at 
bottom reliable from the national standpoint, for such 
a party will ultimately allow itself to be influenced in 
favour of national interests in the choice, often so hard 
in Germany, between the interests of the community in 
general and those of the party. 

No German Minister need give up this healthy 
optimism, no matter how sceptically he may regard the 
parties in the ordinary course of politics. Firm belief 
in the ultimate victory of the national idea is the first 
condition of a really national policy. [During my term 
of office I never lost sight] of the glorious words which 
Schleiermacher uttered in the dark year of 1807 : "Ger- 
many is still there, and her invisible strength is 
unimpaired." This belief we Germans must not forgo 

21^ 



Imperial Germany 

in the hurly-burly of our party squabbles, which still 
makes the display of spontaneous national feeling seem 
transitory, like a rare hour of rest. 

A review of the fate of the German Army Bills 
during the last quarter of a century affords at the 
same time a picture of the changes in the parties with 
regard to the national idea. The Conservatives have 
a right to the reputation of never having refused a 
single man to their country, and the National Liberals, 
too, have never endangered the fate of an Army Bill. 
In this respect the old parties of the Cartel hold the 
foremost place. 

Prince Bismarck had bequeathed an Army Bill to 
the new Reichstag of 1890; this Bill was introduced 
in a form of much less scope than that of the original 
draft, as conceived by the old Imperial Chancellor. 
Count Caprivi asked for 18,000 men and 70 batteries. 
In spite of the fact that the venerable Moltke spoke in 
favour of the Bill, its fate was doubtful for a long 
time. Eugen Richter refused it in the name of the 
whole Ultra-Liberal party. With the help of the 
Centre the Bill was passed by the Cartel parties, but 
the Centre only gave its consent on condition that sub- 
sequently a Bill for two-year military service should 
be introduced. 

The great Army Bill of 1893 became a necessity so 
soon owing to the fact that the demands made by the 
preceding Bill had been insufficient for requirements; 
this showed how uncertain the foothold of the national 
majority of the middle-class parties was. The Centre 
vented on the Army Bill its resentment for the dis- 
appointment of its hopes with regard to educational 

214 



The Social Democrats Win 

policy in Prussia. Although its demand for two-year 
military service was included in the new Bill, the party 
could not make up its mind to vote for it. Among the 
Ultra-Liberals the national idea at that time was trying 
to find expression. But only six Ultra-Liberal deputies 
at last consented to vote for the Bill. In 1893, sixteen 
years before its realisation, there rose for a moment the 
hope of co-operation between the Conservatives and 
Liberals, including the Ultra-Liberals. The time, how- 
ever, was not yet ripe. The rejection of the Bill by 
the Centre, Ultra-Liberals and Social Democrats was 
followed by the dissolution of the Reichstag. 

In the elections the Ultra-Liberals in favour of the 
Army separated from the party of progress; but the 
elections did not result in a national majority without 
the Centre. The Social Democrats increased the 
number of their seats. The bulk of the Ultra-Liberals 
remained in opposition. The majority — 201 against 
185 — was only obtained by means of the Polish party, 
which had increased from sixteen to nineteen. 

Six years later the Government had to put up with 
very considerable reductions in its Bills, and never- 
theless only succeeded in passing the new Army Bill 
with the help of the Centre after a violent struggle 
against the opposition of the Ultra-Liberals and Social 
Democrats. There was no question of ready or enthu- 
siastic acceptance, and a conflict in home politics 
seemed very imminent. I found the majority which 
had passed the Tariff Bill ready to accept the Army 
increase of 10,000 men in the spring of 1905, but the 
Ultra-Liberals still held off. The case was much the 
same with the Navy Bills. Hot fights were the rule, 

215 



Imperial Germany 

and consent was usually the result of long discussions 
and explanations between the Government and the 
parties. In the year 1897 ^^^ even two cruisers were 
granted, and yet in the following year it was possible 
to get a majority in the same Reichstag for the first 
great Navy Bill. 

In the interval, comprehensive and enlightening 
work had been done. The Emperor William II. had 
advocated the national cause with all his heart and 
soul. Learned men like Adolph Wagner, Schmoller, 
Sering, Lamprecht, Erich Marks and many others 
made successful propaganda for the fleet at that time 
and in subsequent years, especially among the educated 
classes. The Bill of 1898 was passed by a majority of 
212 against 139 votes. Twenty members of the Centre, 
all the Ultra-Liberals and the Social Democrats voted 
against it. 

The important Navy Bill of 1900 again found the 
Ultra-Liberals solidly on the side of the Opposition. 
The Centre this time voted as one man for the Bill 
after the number of cruisers demanded had been re- 
duced from sixty-four to fifty-one. In the year 1906 
these additional ships, which had been refused before, 
were granted by the majority which passed the Tariff 
Bill. In the same way the increase in the dimensions 
of the battleships, necessitated by the example of 
England, was granted. 

In the end we certainly succeeded in obtaining 
majorities of the middle classes for all these Armament 
Bills. But their acceptance was nearly always the result 
of difficult negotiations, and often of inconvenient com- 
promises. We were very far from being able to count 

216 



The Colonial Debates 

on sure and substantial national majorities for our 
legitimate and reasonable Armament Bills. More than 
once the decision hung in the balance. And had it not 
been, as was the case in the Army Bill of 1893, ^or 
the unexpected assistance of the Poles, success and 
failure would each time have been dependent on the 
presence or absence of the good will of the Centre. 
This was bound to give that party not only a very 
strong sense of power, but a great deal of actual 
power. The expression, "the all-powerful Centre," so 
often heard before 1907, was fully justified. In point 
of fact, a party, on whose good will the Empire was 
dependent in all questions of national existence, was 
virtually in possession of political leadership, at least 
in those matters which, in accordance with the Con- 
stitution, are open to the influence of parties and the 
representatives of the people. 

When the Colonial debates of the winter of 1906 
showed that it was by no means safe to count on the 
Centre, it became clear that some solution yet re- 
mained to be found for the problem of how to safeguard 
naval and military matters in the party warfare. The 
change of front of the party of progress, and the 
victory at the poll of the new majority of the 
Block, was the turning point. The Centre learnt that 
the fate of national questions no longer depended on 
it alone, and it learnt further that the negative attitude 
might well prove fatal to its powerful position in Par- 
liament. [It will never again allow its attitude to 
national claims to be politically influenced by ill-feeling 
on a personal question or on matters of home politics.] 
The Ultra-Liberals proved, in the spring of 19 12 and 

217 



Imperial Germany 

in the summer of 1913, that they consider the change 
of front carried out in 1906 a permanent one. 

That there has been such a development of the 
national idea, and that such a change has come over 
the attitude of the parties towards Imperial questions 
of protection and armament, must fill every patriot 
with joy and confidence. Fifty years ago, King Wil- 
liam found himself alone with his Ministry and a small 
Conservative minority, in the struggle to reorganise 
the Prussian Army. After the founding of the Em- 
pire, Bismarck had to fight obdurately with the parties 
for every Army increase, however small. The year 
1893 witnessed once more a bitter struggle in home 
politics for an Army Bill. In October, 1899, the 
Emperor William II. lamented that, "in spite of urgent 
requests and warnings " during the first eight years 
of his reign, the increase in the Navy had been steadily 
refused. When at last the idea of a navy had taken 
root in the minds of the people, even then the indi- 
vidual Navy Bills were only passed after hard fights in 
Parliament. 

The Armament Bills of 19 12 were passed by the 
whole of the German middle-class parties in the Reich- 
stag. The Army Bill of the year 1913 met with such a 
willing reception from all parties as had never before 
been accorded to any demand for armaments on land 
or at sea. For the Army Bill itself no serious exposition 
was really required. If the parties fought over the 
question of expense, it was for reasons due to the 
general situation in party politics, and considerations of 
very serious questions of finance. Not one of the 
middle-class parties, from the extreme Right to the 

218 



The Armament Bills 

Ultra-Liberals, even thought of making their consent 
to the Armament Bill itself dependent on the difficulties 
and differences of opinion in the question of meeting ex- 
penses. [Even before the war a necessary and well 
justified Army and Navy Bill could always count on 
a safe parliamentary majority. The period of the Block 
played a very essential part in the attainment of this 
success. It is impossible to conceive what without it 
the development of that long struggle would have been, 
which the Government had to carry on against the 
parties in order to make national ideas prevail. This 
struggle was the salient characteristic of our home 
policy from the founding of the Empire up to the out- 
break of the world war; but now, let us hope, it is 
ended and belongs to past history.] 



219 



CHAPTER XVI 

ATTITUDE OF THE SOCIAL DEMOCRATS^ 

In August, 1914, at the grievous moment when the 
nation was summoned to national action, when our 
Emperor had uttered the beautiful words, that he no 
longer knew of any parties, he knew only Germans, 
the Social Democrats, who up till then had stood aside 
in all decisions regarding national questions, properly 
so called, came into line with the whole German nation. 
They, as well as the other parties, immediately assented 
to the war credits, and thereby in the hour of danger 
granted the country the armaments which they had 
always refused in the desired form in times of peace. 
They showed that their late leader, Bebel, had been 
in earnest when he said that if Germany were attacked 
he himself would shoulder his gun. 

The grave hour in 19 14, which we had not ex- 
pected so soon, brought much that was great and lofty 
and matter for rejoicing; and without doubt the attitude 
of Social Democracy was one of the matters for greatest 
rejoicing. I myself, who during my term of office was 
always on bad terms, and sometimes on exceedingly 
bad terms, with the Social Democrats, shared in the 
liveliest and sincerest manner the general satisfaction of 
the nation. 

* New to this edition ; thirty-two pages of the old edition dealing 
with the Social Democrats are cancelled. 

220 



An Unfounded Doubt 

No one who knew what sound, deep-rooted patriotism 
resides in our working classes, ever was seriously con- 
cerned lest the Social Democratic movement should, in 
the hour of need, paralyse the striking power of the 
German Empire and of the people. The only doubtful 
point was whether the parliamentary leaders of the 
Social Democratic working men would quickly and 
surely decide to take the patriotism of the working 
masses into account. This doubt, if it existed any- 
where, was proved unfounded by events. The Social 
Democratic leaders were guided by that love of their 
country and that consciousness of their duty to the 
nation, which they well knew the working classes, who 
formed their political following, to harbour ; in so doing 
they acted not only patriotically, but also with far- 
seeing cleverness from the party point of view. 

It must be considered a highly remarkable sign of 
political judgment, particularly on the part of the Social 
Democratic party, that they did not fall into the very 
frequent mistake of party politics, of letting time do 
them an injury by failing, from sheer party-political 
dogmatism, to recognise its signs. The Social Demo- 
cratic leaders well know that they rendered their party 
signal service by the attitude they adopted on the out- 
break of war, irrespective of the service they thereby 
did the interests of the nation and the State at a time 
of great danger. 

This is really only one more proof that the wisest 
party policy is always that which meets the needs of 
the State. What is true of the hard necessities of w^ar 
is ultimately true of the often disagreeable and 
unpleasant necessities of peace. 

221 



Imperial Germany 

Though it never occurred to any German that even 
a section of the Social Democratic working men would 
refuse to fulfil their duty of defending the nation in 
war, or indeed that they would wish to refuse, yet the 
conviction prevailed in wide circles abroad that on the 
outbreak of war Germany would have trouble on 
account of her Social Democratic question. There was 
unmistakable astonishment in the foreign Press when 
the German war credits were passed unanimously, and 
party questions were ignored by the nation as it rushed 
to arms. This mistake abroad is explained by the 
peculiar character of German Social Democracy, which 
is fundamentally different from the Socialism of other 
countries. 

When Karl Marx, the most effective and most 
thoughtful demagogue of modern times, issued his fiery 
proclamation: "Working men of all countries, you 
must unite ! You have nothing to lose but your fetters, 
but you have the whole world to gain ! " in all civilised 
countries socialistic labour parties and organisations 
were formed; these were partly of new and partly of 
older origin, but they all soon tried to get into touch 
with one another. In other lands, especially in the 
Latin countries, these Socialist parties fitted themselves 
into the party system of the nation, and their efforts 
were directed to achieving practical results in current 
politics; but German Social Democracy immediately 
set up a programme of the remote and often Utopian 
aims of Marx's theory ; it announced a new and different 
order of the State, of society and of the nation, and 
consequently took up a position outside the ranks of 
national party life among the Germans. German 

222 



Social Democratic Utopianisms 

Social Democrats were really the only ones who took 
their socialistic ideals seriously, and after the war it 
will be many a long day before they learn to distinguish 
between ideals that can be realised and those that are 
hopelessly Utopian. 

For a considerable period there was a strong 
tendency dominating Social Democracy, which refused 
all participation in the parliamentary life of the existing 
State and party systems, as being irreconcilable with 
socialistic ideals. Very gradually and hesitatingly did 
the Social Democrats take part in parliamentary life, 
and it is only a very short time ago that they consented 
actually to co-operate in a piece of legislative work. 
They have always laid stress on the fact that their ideals 
had nothing in common with the conception of law, 
the order of society and the national ideals on which 
the existing State system in Germany is based. From 
the very beginning all their political conceptions 
belonged to a different sphere from that of actual 
politics. 

Moreover, they formed the only party in the civilised 
world that was absolutely sincere in including Marx's 
cosmopolitan ideas in its programme, and that defended 
these ideas with a vigour that is peculiar to German 
party organisations when their programme is in ques- 
tion. Abroad the common international interests of 
the proletariat were recognised to this extent, that 
Socialist leaders at International Congresses made more 
or less clever speeches in praise of the " Internationale,'* 
but they never made the least attempt to achieve its 
realisation. For the German Social Democrats, the 
"Internationale" has always been a matter of convic- 

223 



Imperial Germany 

tion, and what is far more where a German is 
concerned, a matter of feeling. 

There is much that is traditional both in the possible 
and the impossible political aims of German Social 
Democracy, and especially in its ideas concerning con- 
stitutional reforms; similarly, its cosmopolitanism is 
really a characteristically German tradition which in 
the socialistic programme has assumed a one-sided 
party-political form. 

The German has always had a conscious desire to be 
a bit of a citizen of the world. The German ideal of 
world citizenship has very, very often been disastrous 
for us in politics, and particularly in foreign politics; 
but in the world of thought it has inspired and per- 
meated the loftiest works of our poets, the deepest works 
of our philosophers, and has borne its share in helping 
German intellect to conquer the whole world. Cosmo- 
politanism and internationalism have actually become 
our national peculiarity. 

In the socialistic labour movements, the ideal of 
world-citizenship was given a particular interpretation, 
directed toward a goal that could apparently be reached. 
This, however, is a limitation which robs the ideal of 
its German liberty and greatness. The idea of the in- 
tellectual and moral community of nations, the '* seid 
umschlungen MilUonen " (all mankind shall mingle in 
an embrace) of Schiller's beautiful poem, this, for 
German Socialism, grew to represent the common 
interests and common struggles of one particular class 
of people : the wage earning proletariat. Just as Marx, 
in his passionate onesidedness, demanded. A queer 
alliance was thus formed between German particularism, 

224 



Social Regeneration 

and even German caste prejudice, and German sympathy 
for world citizenship. Because its ultimate and highest 
political aims lay in the realm of international ideals, 
German Social Democracy differed fundamentally from 
all other German parties, which, on the common 
ground of national traditions, made for the goal of 
national development by different paths. It wanted to 
be a non-national party in national life, and it suc- 
ceeded in this to such an extent that, for decades, it 
resolutely opposed all the demands of German national 
policy. 

This self-isolation of Social Democracy by its refusal 
to share national ideas, was further aggravated by in- 
tolerant emphasis of the so-called class consciousness 
of the proletariat, which originally was nothing but a 
special form of German caste feeling. The socialistic 
regeneration of the world was to be carried out by the 
proletariat for the proletariat. Other classes of the 
population were looked upon as the suffering objects of 
the policy of the proletariat. The Social Democrat 
felt that to him alone was granted the right of posses- 
sion in the newly promulgated ordering of the world, 
in the advantages of a supposedly higher moral and 
social life. 

We lived to see the extraordinary spectacle, that in 
the course of the nineteenth century in Germany the 
fourth Estate, considering itself to have higher 
privileges, proudly cut itself off from the other estates, 
which in former centuries had surrounded themselves 
with barriers against the lower orders. The legal and 
practical abolition of all class privileges in modern 
State life had the result that the working-class fourth 
p 225 



Imperial Germany 

Estate, which for a long time, and no doubt wrongly, 
had been regarded as being entitled to less privileges, 
in its turn claimed class privileges on its own behalf. 

Such a condition of affairs could only be transitory, 
since it was abnormal. Just as the old struggle of the 
upper classes, so the new struggle of the Social 
Democratic class wore itself out on coming into con- 
tact with the hard facts of practical life, which placed 
in the foreground of political strife the accomplish- 
ment and consideration of measures affecting the vital 
interests of the industrial and agrarian classes. 

In sober truth the German working men, with their 
Social Democratic organisation and views, were not 
really desperately anxious to find compensation for 
sensible and actual economic distress, in their hopes of 
founding a socialistic State, in which the proletariat of 
future centuries should rule, free from care. In reality, 
the working man desired the amelioration of his own 
lot at the time : higher wages, shorter working hours, 
help in sickness and provision for his old age ; but the 
struggle between his interests and those of the em- 
ployer did not tend away from national life, but rather 
led deep into its midst, for there was no chance of 
bringing it to a successful issue except upon the ground 
of the existing economic system, and the workman 
could win more freedom of action in the fight only by 
means of legislative action on the part of the existing 
State. Involuntarily, and often unconsciously. Social 
Democracy turned from its socialistic and international 
aims to social-political problems, the solution of which 
was a national matter. 

This change from socialistic ideology to socialistic 

226 



The Trades Unions 

practice coincided with, and was due to, the growth of 
the Trades Union movement. While the number of 
the so-called organised Social Democrats increased 
slowly, that of the members of the Independent Trades 
Unions grew rapidly. The latter became three times 
as numerous as the former, so that the strength of 
Social Democracy now depends almost entirely upon 
the Trades Unions. But these placed in the forefront 
of their aspirations the attainment of tangible economic 
advantages for the workmen, advantages which could 
only be permanently secured in the course of legisla- 
tion by the existing State. 

The Independent, that is to say, the Social Demo- 
cratic Trades Unions, clung to the socialistic pro- 
gramme; they remained the representatives of the 
** Internationale " and of the ideas of a future Socialist 
State, and politically they continued to be adherents 
of the Radical-Democratic agitation, all of which are 
legacies of the great French Revolution and of Germany 
before the March Revolution. In this way they did 
not effect . any modification either in the Republican 
tendencies of Social Democracy, or in those which in 
their aims are revolutionary. 

In pursuing a robust policy of present interests with 
tangible aims, these coalitions have, however, done 
much to change Social Democracy from a non-national 
party, imbued with blind class struggles and class 
fanaticism, into one representing the interests of Ger- 
man working men. They have shown the workman 
not only what he may hope from the desired socialistic 
State of the future, but also that he may win much 

from the present State. 

227 



Imperial Germany 

In addition to the Independent Trades Unions which 
work with the Social Democrats, other working men*s 
organisations had arisen which serve the trade interests 
of the workers without pursuing the socialistic and 
Radical Democratic aims of the Social Democratic 
party. These organisations, with more than 1,500,000 
members, together with the 2,500,000 members of the 
Independent Trades Unions, play a very considerable 
part in the Labour movement, and just because they 
have not mingled their representation of trade interests 
with Radical opposition in politics they have done a 
great deal for the constant improvement of the German 
working men's economic position. It is those parties, 
with which the Non-Social Democratic labour organisa- 
tions were in sympathy, and in particular the Centre, 
that have helped to carry out the magnificent work of 
German social policy. 

When the world war broke out the German working 
men could look back upon the results of half a cen- 
tury's labour policy, upon the successes of their own 
struggles in defence of their interests, upon the effects 
of a State legislation which had satisfied the claims, the 
wishes and the needs of the working man. 

True, the Social Democratic party was stronger 
than ever before, but it had long represented a very 
different working class from that to which Marx ex- 
claimed : "You have nothing to lose but your fetters ! " 
The German workman, whether he were a Social Demo- 
crat or not, had indeed for a long time had much to 
losec Though he might still be far from the goal of 
his desires, though he might sometimes still suffer 
grievously in the economic struggle, he had gone for- 

228 



Only Hypothetical 

ward, he could contemplate a secure condition of labour 
which enabled him to earn a living, he was protected 
from the consequences of sickness and the cares of old 
age. A comparatively large section of the German 
proletariat had gradually risen to the level of the lower 
middle classes. And the steady, if slow, rise of the 
German working men was in no way conditioned by 
common international interests of the proletariat, but 
by those of the general economic development, at home 
and abroad, of the German Fatherland. 

I am not suggesting the possibility, but in case of 
a German defeat, how could social legislation be con- 
tinued? Is it not evident that in a defeated Germany 
the structure of our social legislation, which is a model 
in its way, and has nowhere else been carried out so 
carefully and on such generous lines, must collapse ? 

The jejune facts of everyday life have achieved 
what no amount of teaching could do : they have con- 
vinced even the Social Democratic workman that his 
welfare is indissolubly bound up with the welfare and 
safety of the whole German people, with the might of 
the German Empire. When the Fatherland was in 
danger all socialistic and international ideals were as 
nothing compared with the sturdy patriotism, based on 
interest, which for the workman made the national war 
a struggle for his own interests. Nothing could have 
more clearly proved the ties which unite labour with 
the existing State than the fact that immediately after 
the outbreak of war it was just the Independent, the 
Social Democratic Trades Unions, which placed them- 
selves at the disposal of the Empire for the fulfilment 
of the great economic tasks of the war. 

229 



Imperial Germany 

It will be no easy matter for the Social Democrats 
in future to reconcile their manifestations of loyalty to 
State and Fatherland during the war with the social- 
istic Radical-Democratic programme, to which they 
seem absolutely determined to cling. They will have to 
make up their minds to sacrifice many of their old 
aims, and if in the peace time to come they are to be- 
come more and more firmly entwined with national life 
in general, they will have to break with many of the 
tendencies and suggestions of their former class 
struggle. Fluctuations and setbacks will be unavoid- 
able. It will be to the interests of all Germany, and 
also to that of labour, that Social Democracy should, 
by its moderation, prudence and insight, maintain the 
position of equality with the other parties which it has 
secured by its attitude in this war. 

But it will also be one of the most important duties 
of the Government and the other parties, to smooth the 
way in time of peace for Social Democracy to take its 
part in State life, now that it has been won over to the 
national cause during the war. The State must deal 
justly and without prejudice with the working man, 
even if he is a Social Democrat. It must make it easy 
for him to feel that he enjoys the rights of citizenship, 
both in public and in social life. Clever and broad- 
minded State administration will be able to do a great 
deal in that direction. 

Every patriot of insight without distinction of party 
position will endorse the words spoken in Berlin in 
March, 1915, by the Social Democratic Reichstag 
deputy, Herr Heine. He said : 

"The quarrelsomeness and spirit of dissension which 

230 



A Narrow Outlook 

have always been peculiar to the German have survived 
the founding of the Empire, and have now struck in- 
wards. Germany still moves far too much in the realm 
of ideas which belong to the time before the March 
Revolution; she is still bound by the narrow views 
of the petty bourgeoisie. The German considers 
every political opponent his personal enemy. The 
people, therefore, were divided into different camps. 
That has been materially altered by the war; yet we 
must realise that Germany is not only in danger now, 
but that even after victoriously concluding the war she 
will remain in danger, that our work will be harder 
then, our earnings less, our burdens greater, and the 
danger of new wars more imminent than before. 

"The consciousness of unity in the nation must con- 
tinue, therefore. Proscription, defamation and contempt 
of opponents must have an end, for they destroy the 
consciousness of unity and kinship. Therefore the 
persecution of fellow countrymen must stop. Each 
man may continue to fight for his own convictions, 
but with objective calm, and he must never forget 
that his opponent, too, desires the good of the nation. 
Only if we overcome the Philistinism amongst us, 
which can bear no dissenting voices, shall we attain 
that inner peace which makes fruitful work in the 
interests of the people possible." 

The deputy, Herr Heine, thus expressed a wish 
which I uttered in my last speech in the German Reich- 
stag on June i6, 1909, when I said: "I hope we shall 
reach the point when we do not necessarily consider 
another man a fool or a knave because he holds a 
different opinion from our own on some political or 

231 



Imperial Germany 

economic or social question. That will mean real pro- 
gress in the direction of freeing ourselves from intel- 
lectual fetters and ridding ourselves of the bonds of 
Philistinism. But we have not yet reached that point." 

Goethe knew where the shoe pinched when in a 
famous verse he compares himself who strove to free the 
Germans from the "bonds of Philistinism" with old 
Bliicher who liberated us from the Frenchmen. 

The true means of restraining the working men from 
adopting the seductive belief of the Socialists in an in- 
finitely better future, is to pursue a courageous, wide- 
minded policy which can maintain the nation's satisfac- 
tion in the present conditions of life — a policy which 
brings the best powers of the nation into play; which 
supports and strengthens the middle classes, already 
numerous and ever increasing in number, the vast 
majority of whom steadily uphold the monarchy and the 
State; which, without bureaucratic prejudices, opens a 
State career to men of talent ; and which appeals to the 
better feelings of the nation. The idea of the nation 
as such must again and again be emphasised by dealing 
with national problems, so that this idea may continue 
to move and to unite the parties. 

Nothing has a more discouraging, paralysing and 
depressing effect on a clever, enterprising and highly 
developed nation such as the Germans, than a mono- 
tonous, dull policy which, for fear of an ensuing fight, 
avoids rousing passions by strong action. My prede- 
cessor in office. Prince Chlodwig Hohenlohe, was for 
long a very kind chief to me when he was ambassador 
in Paris, and he often conversed with me even when 
we were not on duty. Once, when he was praising 

232 



Ministerial Qualities 

a certain Bavarian statesman as being particularly 
capable, diligent and conscientious, I asked him why, 
as President of the Bavarian Ministry, he had not pro- 
posed this man for a Ministerial post. "He was not 
reckless enough for a Minister,*' replied the Prince 
very gravely. When I expressed my surprise that 
such a thoughtful, calm and exceedingly prudent man 
as Prince Hohenlohe could say such a thing, the wise 
and politic Prince answered: "You must not under- 
stand my remark as an encouragement to reckless 
action in life, to which young people incline only too 
readily. What I said was meant politically. A Minister 
must have a good amount of resolution and energy in 
his character. He must sometimes risk a big stake and 
ride at a high hurdle, otherwise he will never be any 
good." 

Various similar remarks of Prince Bismarck*s might 
be adduced in support of this one of Prince Hohenlohe's. 
Governments and Ministers must not avoid struggles. 
A sound nation has even more need of friction between 
itself and the Government than of friction between 
the parties. This friction produces the vivifying 
warmth, without which the political life of a people 
ultimately grows dull. It is a curious fact that the 
German has always felt the need of occasionally knock- 
ing up against the authorities. Nothing annoys him 
more than if the authorities get out of the way. And 
it will always be found that party antagonism is most 
intensified when the Government is disinclined to do 
battle now and again. The old German delight in 
fighting, of which we hear in history and legend, still 
lives on in our political life. A German considers that 

233 



Imperial Germany 

policy the best which does not leave him in peace, but 
which keeps him busy fighting and allows him occasion- 
ally to display his prowess; in a word, a policy which 
invigorates by its own vigour. 

True, there is a difference between a political fight 
and political vexation. The former is vivifying, the 
latter venomous. The people are well able to perceive 
whether the Government proves its power in great 
matters, or abuses it in small ones. It is the same with 
the master of the State as with the master of the home. 
A home tyrant is mostly a weakling; strong-willed 
men are usually broad-minded and indulgent in little 
things at home, because they use their strength for 
great things. By a policy of pin-pricks a Government 
only makes itself unpopular without earning respect. 
Nothing more easily produces discontent with existing 
conditions, nothing tends more to foster Radicalism 
among the people than narrow-minded bureaucracy, 
clumsiness on the part of the police, and, above all, in- 
terference in intellectual matters, in which a civilised 
nation quite rightly wishes to remain unmolested. 

It is not a specifically German quality, but one 
common to all mankind, that personal experience of 
injustice, and of vexation at mistakes on the part of 
the administration, lives more vividly and more per- 
manently in the memory than the most reasonable 
political conviction. 

Social Democrats suck the finest honey from the 
flower of bureaucracy. It is only by living abroad that 
one can appreciate thoroughly what Germany, and 
especially Prussia, owes to her civil service, which has 
been built up by great rulers and excellent Ministers 

234 



Misplaced Energy 

out of the precious material of German loyalty and 
conscientiousness, love of work and power to work, 
and has achieved great things in all spheres. If, when 
a German returns home, the country from the Alps to 
the Baltic and from the Maas to the Memel lies before 
him like a well-tended garden, the merit is in no small 
measure due to the civil service. 

The more this service keeps free from our ancestral 
faults of pedantry and caste-feeling, while preserving 
its traditional advantages, the wider its outlook, the 
more humane its attitude in intercourse with all classes 
of the population, the more enlightened its views, the 
greater will be its achievements in the future. In- 
dulgence and freedom from prejudice in small things 
can well be combined with ruthless energy in great 
ones. It is a common mistake amongst us to display 
energy in our manners and our speech, rather than in 
our actions ; also we are apt to take rough manners and 
rude words for strength and, on the other hand, polite- 
ness for weakness. Amiability and courtesy do not 
exclude determination and vigour; good manners can 
well be combined with energetic action. Contrary to 
the well-known Roman precept, we are too much in- 
clined to display great vigour (jortitudo) as regards the 
outward forms and in trifling affairs, whereas we go 
far, often much too far, in conciliatoriness (suavitas) as 
regards the matter and in great affairs. 

As to the home policy of the future in Germany, 
the attitude of Social Democracy in August, 19 14, con- 
firms anew the belief that I expressed thirteen years 
ago in the Reichstag, when I said that the Monarchy, 
which at the beginning of the last century had, without 

235 



Imperial Germany 

any violent upheaval, made the transition from the old 
to the new form of government, at the present time had 
sufficient strength and insight to alleviate those evils 
and abuses which, in addition to many good things, 
the modern development of affairs has produced, and 
which we sum up in the expression "The Social Ques- 
tion," and would be able to do away with them so far 
as that is possible in this imperfect world. 



236 



CHAPTER XVII 

GERMANIC INFILTRATION OF POLAND 

A DISTINCTION must be made between the domain of 
State rule and a nation's ownership. The two rarely 
coincide. The attempt to make them fit, whether it be 
by obtaining State control over regions where the 
nation has spread, or whether it be by spreading 
national civilisation in the domain where the State has 
power, is responsible for a great number of complica- 
tions in recent history. It has found its most modern 
expression in that form of colonial policy which is 
called, sometimes not quite rightly and sometimes 
quite wrongly, Imperialism. 

Nations of military ability, economic skill and 
superior culture, will mostly reach further with the 
arm of their State power than with the sway of their 
national culture, and will expend their energy on 
making the national conquest follow in the wake of 
the political. 

Weak and incapable nations must look on while 
foreign nationalities gain in number and importance 
within the borders of their State. 

There is no third course. In the struggle between 
nationalities one nation is the hammer and the other 
the anvil; one is the victor and the other the van- 
quished. If it were possible in this world to separate 
nationalities definitely and clearly by means of frontier 



Imperial Germany 

posts and boundary stones, as is done for States, then 
the world's history and politics — by which history is 
made — would be relieved of their most difficult task. 
But State boundaries do not separate nationalities. If 
it were possible henceforward for members of different 
nationalities, with different language and customs, and 
an intellectual life of a different kind, to live side by 
side in one and the same State, without succumbing 
to the temptation of each trying to force his own 
nationality on the other, things on earth would look a 
good deal more peaceful. But it is a law of life and 
development in history, that where two national civil- 
isations meet, they fight for ascendancy ; that where two 
different nationalities are bound to the same place, it is 
difficult to make both contented, and that under such 
conditions friction easily arises. In that part of old 
Poland where, after the partition, most was done to meet 
Polish wishes, it is perhaps shown more clearly than 
anywhere else that measures, adopted on the one side in 
good faith, may rouse excitement and opposition on the 
other. Did the Poles succeed in contenting the Ruth- 
enians in Galicia? Do not the Ruthenians in the 
Carpathians and on the Pruth make the same [com- 
plaints, and even more violent ones, against the Poles, 
as the latter on the Warthe and the Vistula do 
against us?] Other countries, too, resound with the 
battles of nationalities, and the accusations of one 
nationality against another. 

Every nation is, indeed, convinced of the higher 
value and consequently of the better right of its 
own civilisation, and is inspired by a strong desire, 
which is like an unconscious natural force, to attain 

238 



Anglo-Saxon Egotism 

more and more authority for its own civilisation. Not 
every nation is conscious of this force. The great 
Roman generals and statesmen who were the first to 
embark on world politics, were well aware of it, 
when they advanced, conquering as they went, into 
Greece, Asia Minor, North Africa, above all into Gaul 
and Germany where they followed up the conquest by 
arms with the conquest by superior Roman civilisa- 
tion. 

Such a steady consciousness of national civilisation 
exists to-day among the English people. The English- 
man is deeply imbued with the idea of the supe- 
riority of Anglo-Saxon culture. He disapproves at 
times if other nations make more or less energetic 
propaganda for their own culture, but he never raises 
the question whether England herself is justified in 
embarking upon such proceedings. He is convinced 
that English rule and the consequent Anglicising is a 
blessing, and he bases his right to expansion and con- 
quest on his sense of the superiority of Anglo-Saxon 
civilisation and Anglo-Saxon institutions. The grand 
fabric of the British Empire, the greatest the world 
has seen since the Roman Empire, for which no sacri- 
fice of life or property was ever refused, was and is 
supported by the steadfast consciousness and firm in- 
tention on the part of English people of being bearers 
of a higher civilisation to every spot where English 
power extends. The English belief in the superiority 
of their own intellectual, moral, religious, legal and 
economic life is the vital force in English national 
policy. [This spirit which inspires every Briton to 
this very day enables a handful of English officials and 

239 



Imperial Germany 

a small force of British soldiers to govern 300,000,000 
Indians.] 

Higher civilisation has always bestowed political 
rights. The belief in a real or supposed higher civilisa- 
tion has always provoked a claim to rights. When 
France, after the Great Revolution, flooded Europe 
with her armies, she based her right to conquest on 
the supposed blessings of Republican freedom. She 
felt herself the bearer of superior political culture to 
other nations, especially the Germans and Italians. 
In our country in particular there were not a few who 
recognised this right, and were only cured of their error 
by the bitter experiences of Napoleonic despotism. In 
romance countries wide circles are still possessed by this 
error. The civilising mission of the French Revolution 
was based on a fundamental misconception of the nature 
of civilisation in which political institutions have only 
a subordinate value as compared with religion, morals, 
law and education, and it condemned itself by the grow- 
ing brutality of Napoleonic rule. But there are civilising 
missions which are justified. For instance, those that 
the Christian Colonial Powers have to fulfil in Africa at 
the present time. Thus Russia was justified as a bearer 
of higher civilisation to Central Asia. And if ever the 
battle between the higher and lower civilisations should 
cease in the world's history, our belief in the further 
development of mankind would lose its foundation. 
We should be bereft of a great and ideal hope. 

It was a mission of civilisation that in the past led 
us Germans across the Elbe and the Oder towards the 
East. The work of colonisation in the east of Ger- 
many, which, begun nearly a thousand years ago, 

240 



Peaceful Colonisation 

is not yet concluded to-day, is not only the greatest 
but the only one in which we Germans have succeeded. 
Never in the history of the world was less blood spilt 
or less violence used in colonising on such a large scale 
as this. 

This is particularly true of German colonisation in the 
former Kingdom of Poland. For centuries the German 
colonists, often summoned to the country by its kings, 
lived as loyal Polisli subjects and taught the Poles 
higher civilisation. Even those times, when the Ger- 
mans were oppressed in Poland and often deprived of 
their rights, tell no story of German revolt there. When 
the Poles proved themselves unfit to maintain govern- 
ment, and the strong Prussian State with its law and 
order assumed control of parts which had formerly 
belonged to the domain of Poland, the work of German 
civilisation had been going on in these parts for cen- 
turies already. The rare case supervened that the estab- 
lishment of State rule followed and did not precede the 
tasks of colonising and civilising. 

The annexation by the Prussian State of our Eastern 
provinces, Posen and West Prussia, would not and could 
not have come to pass if the Polish Republic of Nobles 
had been a State capable of continued existence. When 
its incorporation in the German dominion of the 
Prussian State took place, the effect was that of a 
belated, political acquisition of rights which the Ger- 
man inhabitants of West Prussia and Posen had 
created long before by their civilising achievements. 
Quite apart from the fact that if Prussia had not placed 
the Germans in Poland under German rule, they would 
have fallen under the dominion of Russia. 
Q 241 



Imperial Germany 

Our eastern provinces are our German new country. 
Although they were incorporated several generations 
earlier than Alsace-Lorraine and Schleswig-Holstein, 
yet they are younger national acquisitions. For one 
thing, in the West it is only old German domain that 
has been recovered, possessions where the German Em- 
perors held undisputed sway, before ever a German had 
crossed swords with a Wend east of the Elbe, or a 
German plough had furrowed Wendic soil. This new 
land in the East, entered by right of conquest at the 
time when Germany's Imperial power was at its zenith, 
had to afford us compensation, from the point of view 
of the State and above all of the nation, for losses of 
old possessions in the West. [In the Prussian Chamber 
of Deputies, in January, 1902, when no one thought 
of the possibility of a European catastrophe, or of a 
change in the Balance of Power in Europe, I said : 
"There was a time when] one had to speak with bated 
breath of the Holy German Empire, when the German 
Empire extended farther in the South and West than 
now. We do not dream of wishing that those times 
would return ; we do not dream of extending our fron- 
tiers in any direction whatever. But what Providence 
has granted us as a compensation for our losses else- 
where, our possessions in the East, those we must and 
will retain." 

Considered from a distance, the German move- 
ment from east to west, and then again to the east, 
appears as a uniform whole. In the seventh century 
we Germans abandoned all land east of the Elbe and 
penetrated far into the West, into the heart of France. 
Holland, Flanders, Brabant, Burgundy, Luxemburg 

242 



Looking Ahead 

and Switzerland were under the sway of the German 
Empire, were in part national German land. In the 
fourteenth century the upper course of the Rhone was 
the boundary of the German Empire. But these 
domains were lost, politically owing to the downfall 
of German Imperial power, nationally because our body 
as a nation was really not big enough to fill the wide 
garment of the Holy Empire. [No one in Germany 
thinks of recovering the territories in which are the 
sources and the mouth of the Rhine. We have always 
conscientiously respected the complete independence 
and absolute sovereignty of Switzerland and the 
Netherlands, and we shall continue in future to do so. 
In contradistinction to our present opponents, we have 
never hindered the free development of nations and 
States whether in Europe or in Asia, America and North 
and South Africa. 

If many patriots hope that we shall retain the posi- 
tion that we have won at the cost of so much blood- 
shed in Belgium, and more especially on the Belgian 
shores of the North Sea, the wish may be ascribed to 
the obvious consideration that this position alone can 
secure for us practical and permanent protection from 
new attacks and the desire for revenge on the part of 
our enemies. But no sensible man will ever entertain 
the idea of recovering ground which there is no 
strategic or economic need for us to possess. 

At the end of the Middle Ages, when we were losing 
ground in the West, we had already found compensa- 
tion in the East; the Germans were already streaming 
back into their old Germanic home which they had 
quitted during the Volkerwanderung (migration of 

243 



Imperial Germany 

nations) and into which Slavonic tribes had made their 
way. And the German colonists who settled east of 
the Elbe, beyond the Oder and on the banks of the 
Vistula and the Pregel, came from Western districts, 
many of them from those very parts which we lost later 
on.] 

The great work of Eastern colonisation is the best 
and most permanent result of our brilliant history 
during the Middle Ages, a piece of work performed, 
not by a single German tribe, but by all of them to- 
gether. One and all — Saxons, Franks, Bavarians, 
Suabians, Thuringians, Lotaringarians, Flemish and 
Frisians — sent men of their tribe to the East of Ger- 
many — laymen and churchmen, knights and peasants. 
The new colony east of the Elbe at that time served to 
bridge the differences between the German tribes, which 
in some cases were very profound. It was common 
German land, with a population which was nothing and 
wished to be nothing but German, in contradistinction 
to the Wends and the Poles. 

If, later on, it was the men from this mother-country 
of the Brandenburg-Prussian monarchy east of the 
Elbe, who in the hour of need manifested their will 
as Germans against the foreigner ; if in our times it was 
by their means that under the black-and-white banner 
of the State of the German Order of Knighthood the 
union of the German lands and German peoples in one 
Empire was realised, the first seeds were sown by the 
formation and settlement of these German colonies. For 
what they gave to the less hospitable East in the Middle 
Ages, the German tribes of the West and the South 
were repaid a thousandfold by the East, when Prussia 

244 



Unfortunate Ventures 

brought State union to the whole of Germany. [Under 
the same colours, beneath which the German knights 
conquered the Eastern Marches for Germanism, the 
armies of the glorious State which has taken over the 
colours, the name and above all the original spirit of 
the State of the German Order of Knighthood, are 
winning victories in the East and in the West.] 

The centuries of the Ottos, the Salic kings and the 
Hohenstauffens can show deeds and events of more 
dazzling brilliancy than the brave and diligent colon- 
isation of the land east of the Elbe, but they can show 
nothing greater. The conquest of the old Prussian 
land by the German Order of Knighthood was but a 
pale reflection of the romantic glamour of the crusades 
and the expeditions to Rome. And the tough work of 
civilisation carried on by the monks in the eastern 
forests and marshes, and by the German citizens in 
the new and growing towns of the east, appears utterly 
prosaic and humdrum in comparison with the grand 
but unfortunate ventures of the world-policy of the old 
emperors. 

But, as so often in history, the brilliant achieve- 
ments that drew all eyes w^ere, for the moment only, 
soon to disappear; while the insignificant events which 
were accomplished on what was comparatively a side 
track of German history were the real things that were 
to be of value subsequently. [The emblems of the Holy 
Roman Empire of the German nation, the orb and the 
sword, the mantle and the sceptre, and the old Imperial 
crown of Germany came from Sicily, and the Emperor 
Henry VI., who won them, lies buried in the Cathedral 
at Palermo. From there the Imperial emblems were 

245 



Imperial Germany 

brought to the Treasury in Vienna, where they now 
remain. But the first Emperor of the new German 
Empire placed upon his head the royal Prussian crown 
in Konigsberg, the capital of the territory of the German 
Order of Knighthood.] 

To-day we think with more gratitude of the German 
Order of Knighthood that gave Prussia to us, of the 
Guelphs who won Holstein and Mecklenburg for us, 
and of the Ascanians of Brandenburg, than of the 
victories in Italy and Palestine. The most portentous 
national disaster was not the sad downfall of the Hohen- 
stauffens owing to the intrigues of [Italian] policy, but 
the defeat of Tannenberg, which resulted in the loss of 
a large portion of the colonisation work of centuries, 
and the cession to the Poles of West Prussia and 
Danzig, and which put an end to the proud independ- 
ence of the State of the German Order of Knighthood. 

It was the wise statesmanship of the Hohenzollern 
Electors that prevented our national possessions in the 
extreme east from slipping completely out of our grasp, 
and that here in the eastern outposts of Germany com- 
bined the interests of the German nation as a whole 
with those of the State of Brandenburg-Prussia. [Had 
it not been for the black day of Tannenberg, the defeat 
at the little town in East Prussia whose name has now 
acquired different and pleasanter associations, thanks 
to the glorious victory of Field-Marshal von Hinden- 
burg, it is questionable whether] the State of the Order 
of Knighthood would have been able to keep the East 
permanently German, in defiance of the superior power 
of Poland. 

There is no question but that we should have lost 

246 



Prussia in the Balance 

East and West Prussia for ever, as we had lost our 
western and southern domains in former times, if the 
House of Hohenzollern had not arisen as a tireless and 
cautious, but brave and determined, warden of the 
German Marches. The Great Elector asserted his rights 
to East Prussia — rights acquired by a clever family 
policy — at the point of the sword, when he bore the 
Red Eagle of Brandenburg to victory over the White 
Eagle of the King of Poland at the battle of Warsaw, 
and thus broke the bonds of Polish suzerainty. Very 
wisely the first King called himself King in Prussia, 
and thereby indicated the hope that his successors would 
be Kings of Prussia by ultimately acquiring West 
Prussia as well. And this hope was fulfilled when the 
Great King received West Prussia, at the first partition 
of Poland, as the prize of victory in the Seven Years* 
War, as Frederick the Great's biographer, Reinhold 
Koser, so well expressed it. Only to the victor of 
Rossbach, Leuthen and Zorndorf did the Empress 
Catherine grant a share of Polish land that had ceased 
to have any right to existence as a State, since the 
Republic of Nobility had been in a condition of anarchy. 
West Prussia was regarded, not as newly acquired 
foreign land, but as German land that had been re- 
covered ; and rightly so. For this country had become 
German, politically speaking, under the rule of the 
Order of Knighthood, and it had become German 
owing to the work of German settlers in town and 
country. But Prussia, besides giving back to the West 
Prussian Germans German rule and the glorious right 
to be German citizens of a German State, gave to her 
new Polish subjects freedom and rights. 

247 



Imperial Germany 

King Stanislaus Leszczinski had lamented his 
country as the only one in which the mass of the people 
lacked all the rights of mankind. The mild yet stern, 
free yet limited, and just rule of the great Prussian King 
conferred on the Polish population what it had lacked 
before. "The surest means of giving this oppressed 
nation better ideas and morals will always be gradually 
to get them to intermarry with Germans, even if at 
first it is only two or three of them in every village," 
wrote Frederick the Great before the year of partition, 
1772. Before a single foot of Polish land had come 
into the possession of the Germans the Great King, at 
a time when the nationality problem was still un- 
known, characterised Prussia's future task of civilisa- 
tion as a Germanisation . Immediately after taking 
possession, he began the work of colonising, and sought 
and found settlers throughout Germany. The King, 
too, only continued what had been begun in the Middle 
Ages, the national conquest of the East of Germany, 
by means of settling German farmers in the country 
and German artisans, merchants and tradesmen in the 
towns. 

When, in 1886, Bismarck proceeded to his policy 
of Polish settlement on a larger scale, as in so many 
of his greatest national enterprises, he merely seized 
the reins that the Great King had held, and that had 
dragged along the ground since his death. A proof, 
amongst many others, how uniform is the national 
history of a people, and that from the national point 
of view there are not two possibilities of equal validity, 
but only one with a validity of its own. 

Though it is true that in different circumstances 

248 



Cutting Up Poland 

we must not slavishly imitate the great models of the 
past, yet it is equally true that the great points of view 
by which our ablest men have been guided, maintain 
their worth for all times and on all occasions, and that 
they cannot be disregarded with impunity. 

It is well known that of the huge addition of quon- 
dam Polish land which fell to Prussia's share at the 
second and third partitions of Poland, but little was 
left to her at the reconstitution in 1815 — West Prussia 
and the present province of Posen, altogether not more 
than seven and a half per cent, of the old kingdom of 
Poland. Even though the province of Posen, with its 
Archbishopric dating from the year 1000, had become 
the heart of the Polish kingdom, yet in the course of 
centuries it had become that part of the great domain 
which was most strongly permeated with German 
elements. By incorporating this old-established Ger- 
man population in the eastern districts Prussia 
undertook a national German duty, in addition to her 
natural duties as a State towards the Poles who live 
within her borders and have become Prussian subjects. 

[Goethe once said in a conversation about the differ- 
ence between private and political morality, that the 
Poles had been ruined by their confused habits of 
thought, and that this confusion had rendered their 
ruin inevitable. Nevertheless, no one will deny that 
this gifted and courageous nation has suffered a tragic 
fate.] 

Just as it is wrong in the necessary fight against 
the Social Democrats to hurt the feelings of the work- 
ing classes, so it is wrong in the fight dictated by 

reasons of State against the propaganda for the re- 

249 



Imperial Germany 

establishment of a greater Poland, to hurt our Polish 
fellow-citizens who fought [with the brilliant prowess 
peculiar to the nation] under the Prussian standards in 
the wars of 1866 and 1870, as also in the present war. 
Because we prize our own nationality so highly we 
must respect the Pole and sympathise with the loyalty 
with which he clings to his national memories. But 
this respect and sympathy stop short of the point where 
arise the desire and ambition to attack the unity 
and solidarity of the Prussian monarchy. No con- 
sideration for the Polish people must hinder us from 
doing all we can to maintain and strengthen German 
nationality in the former Polish domains. [Nobody 
dreams of wishing to thrust out, drive out, or ex- 
terminate the Poles. Even the German opponents of 
a vigorous policy in the Eastern Marches admit how 
greatly the condition of the Poles has improved under 
Prussian administration ; the Poles themselves cannot 
seriously deny it. Every comparison between condi- 
tions of Prussian and Russian Poland shows what 
Prussia has done to improve things for her Polish 
subjects.] But it is the German duty and the German 
right of the Prussian Government to see that the Ger- 
mans do not get driven out of the East of Germany by 
the Poles. 

Nothing is further from the aims of our policy in 
the Eastern Marches than a fight against the Poles; its 
object is to protect, maintain and strengthen the 
German nationality among the Poles, consequently it 
is a fight for German nationality. 

[The German seed in the East must not be lost, as 
so much of what we have sown in the world has been. 

250 



Widespread Germanic Influence 

Many nations owe part of their greatness and prosperity 
to Germany and German ways : The United States 
with 10,000,000 citizens of German origin, Russia with 
her German colonists and many statesmen and generals 
with German blood in their veins, Hungary and 
Bohemia who learnt culture from Germany, Sweden 
whose aristocracy and middle classes are largely of 
German extraction, France and England whose mili- 
tary, intellectual and commercial status have always 
shown traces of German influence. 

Nearly all European dynasties are of German 
origin, everywhere the Volkerwanderung (migration of 
nations) left Germanic deposits. What have we de- 
rived from all this noble seed ? Within our own 
boundaries, in the German East, we want to see the 
German seed grow and ripen. 

This struggle for German nationality in the East,] 
carried on with varying success and by various means, 
runs through the period of a century which has passed 
since the delimitation at the Congress of Vienna of the 
boundaries of the re-established Prussian State. The 
task of solving the Polish problem would probably have 
been easier for Prussia if vain hopes had not been 
roused in the latter by the artificial and untenable 
Grand Duchy of Warsaw, created by Napoleon. 
The Poles would very likely have been spared painful 
experiences on our side as well as on the other side of 
the frontier in 1830, 1848 and 1863, if the memory of 
the ephemeral creation of a State by the first Napoleon 
had not lived in their hearts. The thought that the 
partition of the Polish Republic among the Eastern 
Powers from 1793 to 1807 had only been temporary, 

251 



Imperial Germany 

naturally made it harder for the Poles, after the fall of 
Napoleon and the States he had founded to serve the 
military aims of France, to regard the accomplished 
facts as final. 

[It is very well known that Prince Bismarck con- 
sidered an independent Polish State incompatible with 
the interests of our existence, and he openly and 
emphatically expressed his conviction in speeches, 
letters, conversation and, shortly before his death, in 
his political testament, ** Gedanken und Erinnerungen " 
("Reflections and Reminiscences"). In the winter of 
1887-88, a time when relations between Austria and 
Russia were very strained, he discussed the possibility of 
war among the three empires with Prince Henry VII., of 
Reuss, at that time Ambassador in Vienna, and he con- 
cluded with these words: "And what shall we do 
when we have defeated Russia? Re-establish Poland 
by any chance ? Why, then, in another twenty years 
we might make another alliance among the three 
empires for the purpose of a new and fourth partition of 
Poland. That is a pleasure that would hardly justify 
a great and terrible war.'* 

Prince Bismarck also repeatedly pointed out the 
danger that an independent Poland might become 
the natural ally of France, England or any of our 
opponents. A new Polish State allied with Austria 
would be dangerous for the Habsburg Monarchy, since 
such a combination might lead to the weakening of the 
German element in Austria. In addition to this, 
Polish hopes of getting possession of the Prussian dis- 
tricts, where both German and Polish are spoken, and 

a propaganda for the attainment of this object would 

252 



What Made Prussia Great 

put an undue strain upon Austro-German relations. 
These were the views held by Bismarck on the Polish 
question. 

We must certainly not forget that the Prussian 
monarchy waxed great by the breaking up of the Polish 
Republic, that the black eagle, 

His flight is slow, 

He carries the world's history, 

rose by doing battle with the white eagle. If this world 
war should fulfil the hopes of the Poles, if we should 
make a permanent reality for the Poles of what they 
only obtained transitorily from our most dangerous 
enemy, Napoleon I., if 150 years later than the great 
king and the first partition of Poland an independent or 
autonomous Poland should be established once more, 
then the indissoluble union of the Prussian monarchy 
with the lands forming its eastern frontiers must be 
secured with even greater determination, and the future 
of German nationality in the bilingual provinces be 
tended with greater care and diligence. That which the 
sword of Germany has achieved for the Polish cause 
with German might and German blood, must not sub- 
sequently be permitted to injure the Prussian State and 
Germanism.] 

The task Prussia had to fulfil in the domain, 
formerly Polish, that she had recovered in 18 15 and 
that had been in her possession since 1772, was obvious 
enough. On the one hand, she had to oppose the great 
Polish propaganda with the greatest determination; on 
the other hand, she had to lavish great care on the main- 
tenance and furtherance of German nationality in the 

253 



Imperial Germany 

eastern provinces. These two duties each involved the 
other, in so far as the centrifugal hopes of the Poles 
must lose ground in proportion as a strong contingent 
of Germans, settled in the eastern provinces, counter- 
balanced it. 

If, at the beginning, after the War of Liberation, 
this task had been as clearly recognised and as firmly 
attacked as by Frederick the Great, the Prussian 
Government would not repeatedly in the course of 
temporary moods, which were misunderstood, have 
allowed itself to be diverted from the path so clearly 
indicated, and we should certainly have been consider- 
ably farther on the road to the solution of our problem 
in the Eastern Marches. It has happened so often in 
politics that mistakes were made, not because with quick 
decision the obvious thing was done, but because, 
owing to sentiment and doubts, a clear and absolute 
decision could not be arrived at. 

Even in politics the simplest thing, if not always, 
yet mostly is the best. 

The hackneyed phrases with which the political 
opponents and supporters of a definite national policy in 
the Eastern Marches favour each other, characterise the 
various phases of our Prussian policy in Poland very 
superficially. The aim of Prussian policy in the Eastern 
Marches has always been to reconcile subjects of Polish 
nationality to the Prussian State and the German 
nation. There can be no doubt except as to the different 
means by which this reconciliation is to be attained. 
There has never been a question of anything else, 
whether it was Zerboni, the advisers of Frederick Wil- 
liam IV., and Caprivi, or Flottwell, Grolmann, 

254 



Helping the Pole 

Bismarck, Miquel and I, myself, who determined the 
character of the policy in the Eastern Marches. 

This policy must ultimately reconcile our Polish 
fellow-countrymen to the fact that they belong to the 
Prussian State and to the German Empire. Only this 
must not be achieved at the expense of our national 
possessions in the East, or of the unity and sovereignty 
of the Prussian State. 

It has rarely happened that a State has adopted 
such an unprejudiced and good-natured attitude to- 
wards members of another nationality living within its 
borders as that adopted by Prussia toward her Poles 
in the second and third decades of the nineteenth 
century. 

[When Louis XIV. had extended the limits of his 
realm by successful wars, the first thing he did in 1684 
was to forbid his Alsatian, Flemish and Catalonian 
subjects to use any but the French language in their 
courts of law and administration, and in the year II. 
of the one and indivisible Republic the Convention, 
although their principles and ideas were very different 
from those of the "Grand Roi," repeated this prohibi- 
tion. After regaining possession of the Province of 
Posen and West Prussia, of which Napoleon had de- 
prived her, Prussia treated her Polish subjects with 
fatherly gentleness, very great allowances were made 
for Polish peculiarities,] the blessings of the Stein- 
Hardenberg reforms were conferred on the Poles in 
full measure; an agricultural Loan Society helped 
Polish agriculture, which was in a terrible plight after 
the wars; a Provincial Diet in Posen ensured that local 
Polish interests should be represented; the members 

255 



Imperial Germany 

might be elected, and the people elected Poles ; a Polish 
governor was associated with a Prussian president. 

The result was the revolt of 1830. Prussia had not 
only vainly striven to win the favour of the Poles. 
She had done more; for the sake of the Poles in the 
Eastern Marches she had forgotten to care for the 
Germans there, in that she had placed this German and 
Polish district under a purely Polish administration. 

The men who worked in Posen from 1830-40, the 
President von Flottwell and General von Grolmann, 
bethought themselves once more of Prussia's duty in 
the East to men of German nationality. The second 
phase of our policy in the Eastern Marches began; 
it resumed the thread of the national traditions of 
the Middle Ages of the policy of the Great King, and 
it indicated the course of policy in the Eastern 
Marches to Bismarck and to me. The Polish Governor 
disappeared; by means of the suspension of elections 
for the Diet it became possible to appoint German 
officials, and, as far as the slender means of the Govern- 
ment permitted, a modest beginning was made to 
settle German landowners in the Eastern Marches. 
The policy of Flottwell was no more hostile to the 
Poles than was our later policy in the Eastern Marches, 
which continued on the lines he had laid down. In 
contradistinction to the unsuccessful policy of 1815-30, 
its only aim was to assist German nationality to its 
rights side by side with Polish rights, remembering 
the duties to Germans that Prussia had taken over when 
it gained possession of the old domain of the Colonists. 
In fact the Poles were deprived, not of their rights as 
citizens, but of privileges. 

256 



Polish Demands 

The attempt to reconcile the Poles to Prussian 
government by granting them special rights was re- 
peated in the decade following the transfer of Flott- 
well from Posen to Magdeburg, which took place in 
1840; the culminating point was the so-called "national 
reorganisation " of Posen, which came to nothing. 
The "reorganisation*' was to be effected in the follow- 
ing way : the Eastern and more Polish part of the 
province of Posen was to be separated from the 
Western and more German part, and to be adminis- 
tered entirely by the Poles. The Poles demanded 
complete autonomy in the whole province, like that 
which Hungary now possesses in the Habsburg mon- 
archy. The Germans in the province grew violently 
excited at the threatened loss of their nationality. The 
result of this unhappy attempt was a feeling of bitter- 
ness hitherto unknown between the two nationalities in 
the East. 



357 



CHAPTER XVIII 

DENATIONALISING THE POLE 

After a long period in the 'sixties and 'seventies, 
taken up with the work of founding and consolidating 
the Empire, which resulted in indifference to the 
struggle between the nationalities in the East, Bis- 
marck in 1886 inaugurated his national policy in the 
Eastern Marches on a large scale, after he had intro- 
duced State control of the schools in Posen in 1872, 
and in 1873 the German language as that which was 
to be used for instruction. 

The period of Flottweirs administration could at first 
be nothing but a correction in the national sense of 
the policy in the Eastern Marches. With Bismarck 
there began a determined fight for German nation- 
ality. Up till then the policy had been defensive, 
but, under Bismarck, Prussia began to take the 
offensive in order to rescue German nationality in 
the East, to maintain it and to strengthen it as much 
as possible. It is natural that the Poles were thrown 
into a state of violent excitement, that they prepared 
to defend themselves, and with their splendid organ- 
isation plunged into the fray. The antagonism be- 
tween the two nationalities grew more acute. The 
policy pursued in the Eastern Marches influenced the 
whole of party politics. It is quite true that our home 
politics were not made easier by our national policy 

258 



In the Eastern Marches 

in the Eastern Marches, that a new cause of trouble 
and excitement was thereby added, and that the great 
Polish propaganda among the Poles in Prussia grew 
more general and more violent. 

The opponents of Prussian policy in the Eastern 
Marches, Germans as well as Poles, are fond of em- 
ploying the argument that great unrest has been caused 
by this national policy, begun by Bismarck himself 
and carried on subsequently in accordance with his 
ideas. Such an argument can only bear upon the 
general political shell and not on the core of our 
national problem as regards the Poles. It means 
nothing more than the easy and cheap platitude, that 
in foreign as well as in home politics, peace and tran- 
quillity may always be had if we never strive to reach a 
goal which can only be attained with difficulty and 
by fighting. Such tranquillity is always pretty easy to 
get in politics. 

The problem of our policy in the Eastern Marches 
is this : Shall we permit, shall we, by our inactivity, 
encourage the Eastern domains, i.e. Posen, West 
Prussia, Upper Silesia and parts of East Prussia, to 
slip once more from the grasp of German nationality, 
or not ? 

To ask this question is to answer it. It is the duty 
and the right of the Germans to maintain our national 
ownership in the East of Prussia, and, if possible, to 
increase it. The seventy years between the Congress 
of Vienna and the inauguration of the Prussian policy 
of colonisation made it clear that neither scrupulous 
respect for Polish nationality, nor the ignoring of the 
nationality question in the East, could in the least 

259 



Imperial Germany 

prevent German nationality from being slowly but 
surely driven out of the East by that of the Poles. 

Only a well-thought-out scheme to further German 
nationality could prevent the latter from succumbing 
utterly. If the differences between the nationalities 
were thereby immediately intensified, it was certainly 
unfortunate, but it could not be avoided. In political 
life there are often hard necessities whose behests we 
obey with a heavy heart, but which must be obeyed in 
spite of the sympathies and emotions. Politics is a 
rough trade in which souls burdened with sentiment 
rarely bring even a simple piece of work to a successful 
issue. 

With a fundamental Law of Settlement in 1886 
Bismarck began to fight for the land on a big scale. 
He demanded and received a hundred million marks 
for the purpose of buying land and settling German 
peasants on it; that is, the purpose of increasing the 
numbers of the German element in the Eastern 
Marches. The work of colonisation is the backbone of 
Prussian policy in the Eastern Marches, for it settles 
Germans in the Eastern domain. And the whole 
problem in those parts is the problem of the relative 
numerical strength of the German population as com- 
pared with the Poles. The national acquirement of 
the eastern parts of Germany was begun by settlement 
a thousand years ago, and it is only by settlement that 
national possession can be maintained. The problem 
of the Eastern Marches is at bottom as uncomplicated as 
possible. Its solution depends less on political wisdom 
than on political courage. 

Bismarck set to work vigorously on the basis of the 

260 



Count Caprivi's Concessions 

new law, and during the first five years, from 1886 to 
1890, about 46,000 hectares^ were acquired from Polish 
owners. The beginning of the 'nineties afforded a 
splendid chance to the activities of the Settlement Com- 
mission, as an attendant phenomenon of an otherwise 
lamentable event. Owing to the plight of agriculture, 
the price of land fell rapidly, and it would have been 
easy to acquire a huge mass of land from Polish owners 
for the purposes of subsequent colonisation by Ger- 
mans. But just at that time Count Caprivi thought it 
necessary, for parliamentary reasons, [to make a change 
of policy in the Eastern Marches.] Concessions on the 
questions of schools and church were followed by 
assistance for the Polish Land Bank; that was equiva- 
lent to the rescue of the Polish landowners from whom 
the Settlement Commission had to endeavour to acquire 
land. The immediate and desired parliamentary object 
was in so far attained, that the Polish faction voted 
for the Army Bill of 1893. 

But it soon became evident that the attitude of the 
parliamentary faction, as is often the case, did not 
correspond to the opinions of the party in the country. 
On the occasion of the discussion of the Navy Bill, 
the majority of the faction refused to follow their leader, 
Koscielski. Herr von Koscielski himself made that 
incautious speech at Lemberg in 1894, which con- 
tributed in a considerable degree to the change in 
Prussian policy in the Eastern Marches to the course 
laid down by Bismarck. Ai that time, in September, 
1894, the German Association of the Eastern Marches 
was formed, after Germans from that district had 

' One hectare = 2*47 acres. 
261 



Imperial Germany 

visited the old Imperial Chancellor in Varzin and paid 
him homage. 

The traditions of Bismarck found a prudent inter- 
preter in Miquel after the retirement of Caprivi. New 
funds were placed at the disposal of the Settlement 
Commission in 1898, and land was once more acquired 
on a larger scale. But the words of the poet, "Eternity 
will not bring back what one has refused to accept 
from a moment," again proved true in the case of our 
policy in the Eastern Marches. The favourable oppor- 
tunity in the estate market, which had been allowed 
to slip at the beginning of the 'nineties, was past. 
The Polish landowners had been helped over the 
critical time; the Poles had had the chance of organ- 
ising themselves for the battle for the land; whereas 
from 1886 to 1888 on an average 11,000 hectares were 
acquired yearly from the Poles by the Settlement Com- 
mission, it was only possible to buy from the Poles 
911 hectares in 1895, 1,804 hectares in 1896, and an 
average of 2,500 hectares yearly from 1897 to 1899. The 
land required for purposes of settlement had to be 
furnished more and more by German landowners. 

The energy with which the Poles organised their 
resistance to the German attack on their soil deserves 
admiration. German activity in colonisation was replied 
to by Polish counter activity. The Poles, for their 
part, divided their estates into small lots, for which 
they found colonists to a great extent among the very 
numerous Polish industrial workmen in the West. 
While the Poles thought it shameful to sell land to 
the Germans, Germans unfortunately often did not 
object to selling German landed property to the Poles 

262 



Land Colonisation 

for a high price. I certainly succeeded, after replenish- 
ing the Settlement Fund in the year 1902, in further- 
ing the work of colonisation to a very appreciable 
extent. Land for the purpose of settlement was ac- 
quired as follows : 22,007 hectares in the year 1902 ; 
42,052 hectares in 1903; 33,108 hectares in 1904; 
34,661 hectares in 1905; 29,671 hectares in 1906; 
and after a grant of fresh funds in 1908, 14,093 hectares 
in that year; 21,093 hectares in 1909. 

But it grew more and more difficult to acquire 
estates from Polish landowners, as the Poles held fast 
to their land, and the activities of the Settlement 
Commission on the one hand, and the Polish policy of 
parcelling out their properties on the other, resulted 
in land speculation which sent up the price of estates 
enormously. If the work of colonisation, undertaken 
at such sacrifice and at the cost of such a hard struggle, 
was not to be doomed to ultimate failure, an idea had 
to be put into practice which Bismarck had expressed 
already in 1886, and which was discussed over and 
over again subsequently : the idea of dispossession. 
[The Bill of 1908 gave the State the right to acquire 
land for colonisation by means of dispossession ; it] was 
the logical conclusion of the policy of colonisation 
begun in 1886. 

The struggle for the land, which in its essentials is 
a struggle to permeate the eastern districts with a 
sufficient number of Germans, will always be the alpha 
and omega of our national German policy in the East. 
This must be supported by the struggle for German 
culture and education, and, above all, for the German 
language. We certainly do not wish to deprive the 

263 



Imperial Germany 

Pole of his mother tongue, but we must try to bring it 
to pass that, by means of the German language, he 
comes to understand the German spirit. In our policy 
of settlement we fight for German nationality in the 
East; in our policy with regard to the schools we are 
really fighting for [the Poles whom we wish to bring 
into closer contact with German intellectual life.] Here, 
again, we cannot proceed without severity, and this 
will increase or be mitigated as the Poles increase or 
diminish their opposition. The foundation of the 
German Technical Hochschule, or College, in the year 
1904, and before that, of the Imperial Academy in 
Posen, in 1903, created, in the eastern districts, centres 
of German intellectual life which, let us hope, will 
gradually prove their powers of attracting students. 

Prussian policy in the Eastern Marches has never 
lacked violent critics, especially on the German side. 
The seemingly conclusive argument of these critics is 
the statement that our policy in the Eastern Marches 
has led to no palpable results, since after nearly twenty 
years of the policy of colonisation there is no appre- 
ciable change in the percentage of Germans and Poles 
in the population of the Eastern Marches. As an in- 
crease in the percentage of Germans was what Bismarck 
aimed at, our policy and, in particular, the work of 
colonisation must be considered to have failed. It is 
quite true that we have not nearly reached the goal of 
our policy in the Eastern Marches. Only if we pursue 
the course laid down by Frederick the Great, and later 
again adopted by Bismarck, not with small-minded 
chicanery, nor with clumsy brutality, but with deter- 
mination, and, above all, consistently, can we hope, 

264 



A Prime Requisite 

after a very considerable lapse of time, to fulfil our 
national task in the East of Germany. 

What we need most of all in our Eastern Marches 
is steadfastness. When I was visiting Posen in 1902, 
the head of the Provincial Administration, von Staudy, 
for many years a Conservative member of the Reichs- 
tag, with whom I was staying, said to me at the con- 
clusion of a long conversation about affairs in the 
Eastern Marches: "And now one thing more: stead- 
fastness ! That is what everything depends on here. 
Nothing has done us so much harm as our vacillation, 
the fact that we gave in again and again. Now we 
must hold out ! " 

The work of German colonisation in the Eastern 
Marches, begun a thousand years ago, suspended for 
four centuries, and taken up anew less than thirty 
years ago, cannot be completed in a short time. This 
is not like an ordinary political action, which is soon 
followed by success or failure; we are in the midst of 
a great historical evolution in which generation after 
generation will have to co-operate. If from this 
mighty point of view we regard our national work in 
the East as a stage of evolution, then we may say that 
success has not been denied us. In the years from 
1886 to 191 1, 394,398 hectares of land were acquired 
by the Government to provide for the settlement of 
German peasants; of these 112,116 hectares were 
formerly owned by Poles. On the settlement estates 
there are 150,000 Germans; 450 new villages have 
been buift, and in 300 villages the number of Germans 
has been increased. The successes due to our policy 
of colonisation were convincingly stated by one of the 

265 



Imperial Germany 

most estimable statesmen of our time, Count Botho 
Eulenburg, in 1908, in the debate in the Upper Chamber 
on the Bill of Dispossession. As the last census shows, 
the decrease of the Germans as compared with the 
Poles has ceased, in spite of the higher birth-rate among 
the latter. [Since the beginning of the century when 
the policy of colonisation began to be more vigorously 
pursued, the Germans have increased proportionately 
more than the Poles.] These are results of palpable 
value, these are the first steady steps towards the 
still distant goal, which, however, can be attained, if 
we do not tire of this troublesome struggle entailing 
so many sacrifices, and if transitory phases of practical 
politics do not again sweep the great and permanent 
demands of national policy into the background. 

We must also not deceive ourselves on the point that 
the German, in a struggle between nationalities, does 
not yet always possess the desirable power of resistance, 
and that only too often he runs the risk in such a 
struggle of losing his nationality, if the State does not 
protect and support him. One of the chief difficulties 
of the problem in the Eastern Marches, and at the same 
time perhaps the strongest proof of the absolute neces- 
sity of a steadfast and strong policy there, lies in the 
need to strengthen the backbone of the German who, 
for reasons connected with our good and with our less 
good qualities, is so prone to be assimilated. So far as 
this is concerned, the Government must take things as 
they are. [As I said in the Reichstag on December 10, 
1901, in my first speech on the Eastern Marches,] it is 
its duty to see that the Germans and their nationality 
do not succumb in the East. 

266 



A Danger Averted 

However, the answer to the question as to what the 
state of affairs in the East of Germany would have 
been, had nothing been done for the protection and 
strengthening of German nationality there, affords a 
far better means of judging what has been accom- 
plished than does an enumeration of positive achieve- 
ments. Before we could think of making national con- 
quests in the East, our national possessions had to be 
protected from loss. And w^e succeeded in so doing 
because we fought for them. The development which 
Bismarck thwarted was tending slowly but surely to 
make the Eastern domain Polish. To have warded 
off a danger which threatened, is often in politics 
a greater success than to achieve a momentary 
advantage. 

If the attempt to extend Polish nationality had not 
been met by the Government with a determined effort 
to extend German nationality, things in Posen and 
West Prussia to-day would have been much the same 
as in Galicia. It is quite comprehensible that the 
Austrian monarchy, which is not a State based on a 
foundation of one nationality, has, for reasons of home 
and foreign policy, renounced all further attempts to 
Germanise the Crown land of Galicia since the 'seven- 
ties, and has responded in the most lavish manner to 
Polish wishes, [so that Galicia to-day is a completely 
Slavonic country.] Prussia is the support of the Ger- 
man Empire and of the national idea, is the German 
national State, /car e^oxn^ [and must not be false to 
her national mission.] 

Prussia must be ruled and administered from the 

national German standpoint. If we had allowed the 

267 



Imperial Germany 

Slavonic element in the East of the Prussian Kingdom 
to extend and flood the German element, as has hap- 
pened in part of Cisleithania, instead of having a hard 
fight for German nationality in the Eastern Marches 
to-day, we should have had a fight to maintain the 
unity of the Prussian State; we should not have 
had a Polish problem, we should have had a Polish 
danger. 

Our policy in the Eastern Marches is a national 
duty which the German nation owes to itself. A 
highly cultured and strong nation may not, without a 
struggle, give up national possessions, once they have 
been acquired; it must have such belief in the power 
of its national culture, and such faith in its own 
strength, that it feels itself capable of, and justified 
in, enriching them. Whether we hold fast to our 
possessions in the East or not, whether our policy in 
the Eastern Marches continues in its national course, 
what is to become of our Eastern Marches — these 
are not questions of party politics, but of general 
national importance; and not only the fate of the Ger- 
mans in the East of Prussia, but the future of Prussia 
and of the Empire, nay, of the whole German nation, 
depend on whether these questions are answered in the 
affirmative or in the negative. [I still consider the 
problem of the Eastern Marches one of our most im- 
portant political problems, no matter what changes 
result from the world war on the eastern frontiers, and 
beyond the present frontiers, of the Prussian State.] 



268 



CHAPTER XIX 

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OF GERMANY 

Seldom, if ever, has a country experienced such a 
tremendous economic development in such a short time, 
as the German Empire in the period from the Peace 
of Frankfurt to the outbreak of the world war. The con- 
solidation of Germany's position as a Great Power of 
Europe, with the resultant union of the German States 
and safeguarding of the German frontiers, and the entry 
into the realm of world-policy accompanied by the 
construction of a strong fleet : these two significant 
political events of our modern history most directly 
benefited the development of our industrial life. 

During more than forty years of peace the German 
spirit of enterprise awoke for the first time since the end 
of the Middle Ages, and was able to make use of the 
rapid spread of means of communication, the achieve- 
ments of technical science and skill, the great develop- 
ment of the modern circulation of money, to work for 
the increase of German prosperity. The poor German 
country has become a rich country. [The ease with 
which Germany raised enormous sums for the war loans 
proved her possession of an amount of capital which 
not only filled foreign countries with envious astonish- 
ment, but also surprised us at first. We only learnt 
in war how rich we had grown in peace.] The nation 
of thinkers, poets and soldiers has become a nation 

269 



Imperial Germany 

of merchants and shopkeepers of the first rank. Where 
are the times when Schiller saw only two nations strug- 
gling for the possession of the world- — the Frank, who 
throws his iron sword into the scale of justice, and the 
Briton, who sends forth his mercantile fleet like the 
arms of a polypus — when he transported the German, 
who had lingered in the realm of dreams while the 
earth was divided up, together with the poor poet, into 
the heaven of idealistic simplicity? 

Before the war German industry had its customers 
even in the remotest corners of the earth. The German 
merchant flag was a familiar sight in foreign ports, and 
Ifnew that it was protected by the German navy. 
German capital was employed abroad together with that 
of the old financial Powers, England and France, and 
contributed to the consolidation of the industrial ties 
between us and other nations. The consequences of 
our national regeneration have hitherto been most 
apparent in the sphere of the world's industries. In 
the statistics of international traffic and commerce the 
rise of the German Empire beside the old Powers was 
most plastically expressed. 

We have reason to be proud of our mighty indus- 
trial successes. [Working power, organisation and 
method are the mighty corner-stones of the gigantic 
edifice of German economic life, three truly German 
qualifications which no one possesses in such a high 
degree, for they are due to the personal sense of duty, 
so much more developed amongst us than elsewhere, 
to specifically German conscientiousness, to German 
thoroughness, and to the scientific education of the 
German.] And the satisfaction of the German patriot 

270 



Rapid Industrial Growth 

is justified, if he points out in what an extraordinarily 
short space of time we Germans in our economic de- 
velopment have covered the ground which half a 
century ago separated us from nations that we have 
now outstripped. 

Such success is only possible to the exuberant 
vitality of a nation thoroughly sound, strong of will 
and full of ambition. But we must not conceal from 
ourselves the fact that the almost furious speed of 
our industrial ascent often hindered calm organic 
development, and created discords which demanded 
adjustment. On account of striking successes, due to 
a special talent, men are prone to neglect the har- 
monious development of other abilities and powers. 
At times they may have to pay for such one-sided- 
ness by a painful set-back, if altered circumstances 
demand other powers and achievements. 

In Germany the rapid economic development pro- 
duced a speedy blossoming of industry and commerce 
under the sun of happy circumstances. The perfected 
means of communication opened to us, in a very dif- 
ferent manner from what was possible before, the 
markets of even the remotest countries. The treasures 
of our home soil had been left untouched, the incom- 
parable progress in mechanical and electrical engineer- 
ing placed at our disposal new industrial machinery, 
and the quick growth of our population provided the 
masses of workmen for the foundation and expansion 
of great industrial undertakings. In addition to this, 
forty years of peace afforded an opportunity for work- 
ing the world's markets in every direction. The com- 
mercial and industrial talent of the German nation, 

271 



Imperial Germany 

which once before, centuries ago, had made us the first 
commercial and trading nation of the world, and which, 
owing to the atrophy of our State and a hard national 
struggle for existence had been held in abeyance till 
the last years of the nineteenth century, was extra- 
ordinarily favoured by circumstances. When employers 
and princely merchants like Stumm and Krupp, Ballin 
and Rathenau, Kirdorf and Borsig, Gwinner and 
Siemens were found to take advantage of these favour- 
able conditions, the successes of the immediate future 
were bound to fall to industry and commerce. 

The German nation, therefore, turned more and 
more toward the new prospects opening before it. The 
lower classes deserted the land and flowed in a stream 
into industrial undertakings. The middle and upper 
classes of the commonalty provided a large number of 
capable industrial officials. 

The industrialisation which had given signs of 
growth in the middle of the nineteenth century, was 
accomplished in Germany after the founding of the 
Empire, and especially after the end of the 'eighties, 
with a vehemence which has only been equalled in 
the United States. In the year 1882, agriculture still 
employed almost as many men as commerce and in- 
dustry together; in the year 1895 the number of its 
employees was less by almost 2,000,000 than those of 
industry alone. In thirteen years a complete change 
of conditions had eventuated. 

The economic legislation of the Empire had to take 
into account two possibilities of this fundamental 
change. It might have given all its support to industry 
and commerce, anyway favoured by circumstances and 

272 



Tariff Laws of 1902 

developing with strength and ease; it might have 
strengthened what seemed strongest, have led Germany 
towards a transformation into a purely commercial and 
industrial State, and have left German agriculture to 
its fate. Count Caprivi and his colleagues thought they 
ought to pursue this course. On the other hand, com- 
pensation for unfavourable circumstances might be 
given to agriculture by means of legislation, and the 
transformation of Germany into a one-sided industrial 
State might be opposed, and agriculture might be main- 
tained, strong and vigorous, side by side with flourish- 
ing industry. 

I embarked on this latter course with full know- 
ledge of what I was doing, and with absolute convic- 
tion, when I introduced the Tariff Laws of 1902 ; for I 
was persuaded that vigorous agriculture is necessary 
for us from the economic, but, above all, from the 
national and social points of view, just because the in- 
dustrialisation of Germany continues to progress 
steadily. 

I have always been of opinion that more can be 
learnt from personal intercourse and from life than 
from books, however profound. I incline to think 
that one learns most in conversation with people hold- 
ing different views which they know how to defend. 
**Du choc des opinions jaillit la verite." When, years 
ago, I conversed with a Liberal of the Left about 
economic problems, I asked him at last : "And do you 
think that at a pinch, if there were a terrible war or a 
serious revolution, even with all their gifts and their 
capabilities, and, of course, with a full claim to the 
same treatment, commerce and industry, our splendid 
s 27Z 



Imperial Germany 

new classes can, in the hour of danger, completely take 
the place of those forces which made Prussia great?" 
My political antagonist and personal friend considered 
for a short time and then said : " You are right ; pre- 
serve our agriculture for us, and even our Junker." 
[I should like to add to this remark, which was 
made fourteen years ago, the utterance of another 
deputy who holds the same political views, and who 
said to me in the eleventh month of the war : "Thank 
God that our opposition to your Tariff Bill at that time 
was unsuccessful. What would have become of us 
without well developed and productive agriculture ? "] 

We owe much to industry and commerce. They 
have made our land wealthy, and enable us, above all, 
financially to support our armaments on land and at 
sea. A distinguished man in German economic circles, 
Prince Guido Henckel, used to say agriculture must 
provide our soldiers and industry must pay for them. 

Industry and commerce, these two new lines of busi- 
ness, feed and employ the great increase in our popula- 
tion, which we lost formerly by emigration. We rose 
to the height of a World Power on the shoulders of 
commerce and industry. But the gains of our national 
development in one direction have often been paid for 
by losses in the other. To estimate the real profit of 
German industrialisation, the losses and damage caused 
by it must be included in the calculation. It is soon 
seen, then, that the course of modern economic life 
imposes other and harder duties on us than the task of 
continually forcing on with all our might the growth 
of commerce and industry. 

Modern development has great dangers for national 

274 



Agricultural Considerations 

life, and only if we succeeded in removing these could 
we rejoice with a clear conscience in the new achieve- 
ments. We had to proceed like a clever doctor, who 
takes care to maintain all the parts and functions of 
the body in a strong and healthy condition, and who 
takes measures in good time, if he sees that the ex- 
cessive development of one single organ weakens the 
others. German industry, as a matter of fact, grew 
strong at the expense of agriculture during the first 
decade of its development. If nothing were done, 
agriculture threatened to fall under the hammers of in- 
dustry and be crushed. But that did not mean an 
injury to agriculture alone ; it meant, too, a loss for the 
nation. Our agricultural forces that react on our 
national life are too valuable and too indispensable for 
us ever to be able to cease from caring with all our 
might for the weal or woe of German agriculture. 
The economic life of a nation is not like a business 
house with many branches, which are of more or less 
interest to it according to their chances of profit at 
the time. 

[England is learning that lesson now. Lord Sel- 
borne, the English Minister of Agriculture, ^ declared 
the other day at a public meeting, that Disraeli, the 
leader of the English Conservatives, was right after all, 
when he said after the victory of the Anti-Corn Law 
League, just seventy years ago, that Free Trade would 
be the ruin of agriculture. The triumph of Cobden and 
Bright had been but ephemeral. The world war had 
shown what an increase of power it meant for a country 
to be able to feed its population itself. England had 
* Since resigned, June, 1916. 
275 



Imperial Germany 

now learnt to value the great importance of the rural 
population. After the war the attitude of Parliament 
to agricultural questions would have to undergo a 
radical change. Agricultural questions would in future 
have to be regarded from the point of view of the safety 
of the nation and of national defence; in all questions 
regarding agriculture England would have to make a 
fresh start.] 

Apart from the fact that agriculture as a producer 
and as a consumer stands on a level of absolute equality 
with industry, other than purely economic points of 
view must be considered in estimating the economic 
strength of a nation. The political economy of a nation 
has not only an economic but also a national signifi- 
cance. It is not merely a question of the material 
gain due to the different kinds of work. It also depends 
on how the various occupations react on the mainten- 
ance and growth of the physical and ideal forces of 
the nation. Certainly a nation stands in need of 
increasing its wealth, its financial power to live. States 
in our days need this more than in former times. 
Modern government, with its enormous sphere of 
action, and, above all, modern armaments, demand 
very different material means than was the case 
formerly. But by material means alone a nation can 
neither maintain its place in the world nor advance 
it. Physical, moral and mental health are still the 
greatest national riches. 

Prussia proved gloriously in the Seven Years' War 
and in the War of Liberation what a nation, poor but 
healthy in body and mind, can achieve; whereas 
superior wealth has never been able to prevent the 

276 



Shaping a Course 

disastrous consequences of diminishing strength in a 
nation. ["Woe to the nation whose wealth increases 
while the people deteriorate." At the centenary celebra- 
tion at Dennewitz, before the statue of the victor in 
that battle, I recalled this pregnant saying, in view of 
much that has been unsatisfactory in the last years. If 
there is one thing which fills me with joy, it is that in 
this war I see that our nation, while its material 
prosperity has increased, has verily not sunk morally, 
but has given glorious proof of moral greatness and 
unbroken strength. We must strive with all the more 
vigour after the war to maintain this equilibrium.] 

A State is not a commercial company. In the 
rivalry of the nations of the earth industrial strength 
is of very considerable importance, but great and 
decisive events ultimately depend on quite other forces, 
and are not fought out in the field of industry. The 
truism, that wealth alone does not bring happiness, 
applies to nations as much as to individuals. Nations 
also can only enjoy increased wealth if they have a 
sound mind in a sound body. The Government, in its 
economic decisions, must not, like a clever speculative 
merchant, shape its course according to favourable 
circumstances which offer a brilliant prospect to one 
sphere of industry or another; it must subordinate its 
economic policy to national policy as a whole, must act 
so that not only the present industrial welfare of the 
nation is increased, but that, above all, the future sound 
development of the nation is ensured. 

The question which political economy has often 
asked itself : " How does a nation get rich, so as to be 
able to live well?" must be supplemented for economic 

277 



Imperial Germany 

policy by the other question : " How does a nation keep 
healthy, so as to be able to live long?'* Industry 
and commerce increase our national wealth to a greater 
degree and with greater speed than agriculture was 
ever able to do. But, without great and flourishing 
agriculture by its side, industry would soon use up the 
best forces of the nation, and would never be able to 
replace them. Agriculture is the mother of the nation's 
strength which industry employs, the broad acres in 
which the trees of industry and commerce stand, and 
from which they derive their nourishment. 

We rightly admire in the industrial centres of the 
Rhineland, Westphalia and Saxony the keenness, the 
energy and the organising talent of the employers. In 
the perfection of the industrial machinery we admire 
the powers of invention and the audacity of our 
technical men and engineers. We find cause for 
admiration, too, in the quality of the industrial products, 
due to the diligence and conscientiousness of the Ger- 
man workman. We are rightly proud of the flourish- 
ing state of our great and middle-sized towns, which 
owe their quick development to the rise of industry 
and commxcrce. 

Since the end of the Middle Ages we had experi- 
enced no development of cities on a large scale. And 
it is not fair to condemn the culture of the modern 
large towns without qualification, for, as in the Middle 
Ages, the many greater and more populous cities of 
modern times are centres of intellectual and artistic life. 
Among the influences which emanate from the large 
towns and penetrate into the country there are cer- 
tainly some that have a pernicious effect on the habits 

278 



Dangers of Industrialisation 

of life of the country. But these injuries are often 
counterbalanced by the renewal and the refinement, 
of external culture which nowadays, as always, 
originate in the large towns. Just the man who sees 
the great dangers of an exaggerated development of the 
towns in our country must appreciate the very con- 
siderable achievements of our great cities in the spheres 
of intellect and culture, and must separate the wheat 
from the chaff. 

It is not right either to seek the defects of our 
highly developed great towns too exclusively in the 
ethical domain. There is sin intra and extra muros. 
The just and the unjust are to be found in the country 
as well as in the towns. We must also not forget that 
particularly in the sphere of charity the towns have 
led the way with model institutions, and that in 
making provision for the lower classes the great 
employers of labour have done pioneer work. [The 
towns, too, have played a very considerable part in 
solving the excessively difficult economic problems 
which the world war has brought with it, for it is not 
only a war of weapons, but also one of industry.] 

The dangers of the industrialisation and the conse- 
quent " town ifi cation " of Germany do not lie so much 
in the spheres of intellect and moral life, so difficult 
to gauge and to estimate, but in the physical condi- 
tions. The health of the men and the fertility of the 
women suffer greatly under the influence of life in 
towns, and especially in large towns. For the years 
1876-80 in the kingdom of Prussia the yearly average 
of living children born to women up to the age of forty- 
five was 160 per thousand in the towns and 182 per 

279 



Imperial Germany 

thousand in the country. For the years 1906-10 the 
numbers had fallen to 117 in the towns and 168 in 
the country. That means a loss of forty-three births 
per thousand women in the towns. In the municipal 
district of Berlin alone the numbers had fallen in the 
same space of time from 149 to 84, a loss of sixty-five. 

The rapid increase in the town populations does not 
connote an increase in the national population, but a 
steady decrease, for the women who migrate from the 
country to the towns and the women who grow up in 
the towns effec^t a decrease in the birth-rate of the 
Empire. 

It is the same with the health of the men, as tested 
by their fitness for military service. According to the 
statistics compiled on the basis of the inquiry made by 
a Commission which I appointed in 1906, the country 
districts, i.e. communities of less than 2,000 inhabitants, 
furnished 114 men who passed the military test, the 
big towns of more than 100,000 inhabitants 65, the 
middle-sized towns of 20,000 to 100,000 inhabitants 83 
per 100 men due as calculated on the basis of the total 
population. [Before the war in East Prussia 67.18 per 
cent, of those liable for military service were fit, in 
Berlin only 32 per cent., in the whole of Germany on 
an average 53.55 per cent.] Of the parents of those fit 
for service, 74.97 per cent, came from the country, 
1.68 per cent, from the large towns. And Germany 
has fifty-two towns with more than 100,000 inhabitants, 
France only fifteen, Italy thirteen, Austro-Hungary 
nine. Almost two-thirds of our population live in the 
towns and industrial centres. In the year 1850 agri- 
culture employed 65 per cent. ; in 1870, 47 per cent. ; 

280 



Significance of Agriculture 

in 1895, 35*S per cent.; and in 1907 only 28.6 per cent. 
of the total population. 

These figures are of very serious import. They 
show that every weakening of agriculture means a 
weakening of our power of defence, a diminution in 
our national strength and safety. Commerce and 
industry have only flourished so because peace has 
been preserved by the strength of our armaments for 
almost half a century, and they will only be able to 
continue to thrive in the future if the protection of our 
armaments is maintained in undiminished strength. 

That requisite, however, demands a strong and 
numerous rural population, who can find in highly 
developed agricultural industry sufficient work to earn 
their livelihood. Commerce and industry for their own 
sake must be deeply interested in the prosperity of 
agriculture. As the statistics show, in future even more 
than was the case since the end of the 'nineties, the 
task of protecting trade and property in the Empire 
will fall to the rural population. 

A Liberal savant, an old friend of mine, said to me 
some years ago in Norderney, as he watched the ships 
which passed my house, that he could not understand 
how I, otherwise a sensible man, could have given our 
industrial policy such an agrarian tendency by means 
of the tariff. I pointed to a ship that was just passing, 
and said: "A ship without sufficient ballast, with too 
high a mast, and too heavily rigged, will turn turtle. 
Agriculture is our ballast. Commerce and industry are 
to be our mast and sails. The ship cannot advance 
without them. But without ballast she will capsize." 

The captain of a ship must certainly try to make 

281 



Imperial Germany 

good headway. But he must not acquire speed at the 
expense of safety. If the ship of our Empire is to 
pursue her proud course with speed and safety, then 
the navigators must see that agriculture weighs heavy 
in the hull of the ship. 

The protection of agriculture is a national duty 
of great importance — a duty which would have to be 
fulfilled, even if agriculture were of far less economic 
value than is actually the case. Although agriculture 
no longer occupies the paramount position in industrial 
life that it did formerly, yet it holds its own among 
the other branches of trade. It is true that according 
to the census of 1907 only 17,680,000 inhabitants are 
occupied in agriculture as opposed to nearly 26,380,000 
in industry; but the value of its produce is equal to 
that of the produce of industry, or even surpasses it. 

Statistics on the subject do not supply sufficient 
data, and therefore the question whether agriculture or 
industry is more profitable cannot be answered definitely 
in favour of one or the other. Many a townsman, how- 
ever, will be surprised to learn that the yield of one 
agricultural product alone, namely, milk, was 2,600 
million marks in the year 1906, while the yield of all 
the mines in the same year only amounted to 1,600 
million marks. The estimates formed by agriculturists 
and by industrialists as to the total value of agricultural 
and industrial products are not in agreement. 

But whether, as regards the yield, agriculture or 
industry stands first, that is really of little or no im- 
portance; we need them both, and the downfall of 
one could never find full compensation in the rise of 
the other. To estimate the real economic value of the 

282 



The Foreign Market 

products it would be necessary to ascertain also in 
what manner agriculture and industry react on the 
stimulation and on the money-making powers of com- 
merce. And even then one would still have to take 
into consideration that the value of the yield is in- 
fluenced by the fluctuation of prices in the world's 
markets. These questions are of more interest from the 
point of view of the scientific investigation of economic 
life than from that of the practical political treatment 
of economic forces. 

Industrial goods are disposed of in the foreign 
market, on the Continent and overseas, and in the 
home market in Germany itself. The development of 
our railway systems, our natural waterways, our canals, 
and the oversea traffic growing ever greater under the 
protection of the German navy, have brought the 
foreign market within easier reach. Industry has need 
of the foreign market in order to maintain its present 
development, to extend it and to provide millions of 
workmen with sufficiently profitable work. 

For this reason it is the duty of economic policy 
to conclude favourable commercial treaties of long 
duration in order to keep the foreign market open. 
But, all the same, the home market is also of very great 
importance. [And, as this war has clearly proved, it is 
called upon to replace the foreign market, if in time 
of war our frontiers are wholly or partly closed.] But 
in the home market, agriculture is by far the most im- 
portant customer of industry ; unless agriculture is able 
to buy, unless it earns enough itself to enable others to 
earn too, it will not be able, in critical times, to consume 
a part of the products which cannot be disposed of 

283 



Imperial Germany 

abroad. The old proverb, "If the peasant has money 
then everyone else has too," is literally true, as soon as 
industry is forced, to a greater extent than is necessary 
in times of peace, to find customers at home. 

A policy which only considers the demands, moods 
and chances of the moment, which only does that which 
at the time is easiest to do, which only works ad hoc, 
without thought for future results, cannot claim any 
merit. Gowverner, c*est prevoir. Not even the best 
considered policy can include every future contingency 
in its calculations. 

But every one of our actions and of our decisions 
is the cause of future effects, and it may well be ex- 
pected of a statesman that he foresee at least a part 
of the possible results of his policy. 

Above all there are certain contingencies which must 
be reckoned with, because they have occurred again 
and again, at greater or lesser intervals, in the past, 
and come under the category of indestructible elements 
of the world's history. War is such a contingency and 
must be reckoned with in every statesman's calcula- 
tions. No sensible man desires it. Every conscien- 
tious Government seeks to avoid it so long as the 
honour and vital interests of the nation permit of so 
doing. But every State department should be organised 
as if war were going to break out to-morrow. This 
applies to economic policy as well. 

[Before the war I pointed out in this connection that] 

owing to the sense of security induced by a long period 

of peaceful prosperity, we were more inclined than was 

good for us to make our arrangements, especially with 

regard to economic matters, as if this peace would be 

284 



The Dream of Peace 

permanent. Even if we had not been threatened with 
war during the last decades we must realise that there 
is no such thing as permanent peace, and must remem- 
ber Moltke's w^ords : "Permanent peace is a dream, 
and not even a beautiful one. But war is an essential 
element of God's scheme of the world." 

There was no part of public or private life, I added, 
that would be untouched by war. But the effects of 
war would be most directly felt and most palpable in 
economic matters. The results of a war, be it success- 
ful or unsuccessful, w'ould put in the shade the results 
of even the most serious economic crisis. Economic 
policy must foster peaceful development; but it must 
keep in view the possibility of war, and, for this reason 
above all, must be agrarian in the best sense of the 
word. 



28c 



CHAPTER XX 

THE VITAL IMPORTANCE OF AGRICULTURE 

In time of war the productive power of agriculture 
is a vital question for the whole nation. Those parties 
and groups representing certain economic interests 
v/hich demanded that the Government should place a 
very small duty on agricultural products from abroad, 
or even let them in duty free, so that the price of comes- 
tibles, under the pressure of foreign competition, might 
be kept low, and thus the industrial workman's ex- 
penses of living reduced, wanted to base all economic 
policy on an imaginary permanent peace. 

Our agriculture, which has to compete, so far as 
wages are concerned, with the high wages paid by 
industrial concerns, which has to employ the most 
modern and expensive machinery in order to pursue 
intensive culture on soil that has been tilled for cen- 
turies, is absolutely unable to produce at the same price 
as the large, young agricultural countries, which work 
virgin soil and pay small wages. 

Our agriculture needs a protective tariff. Imported 
agricultural products must have a sufficiently heavy 
duty imposed on them to prevent the foreign supply 
from falling below a price at which our home agricul- 
ture can make a fair profit. The reduction of agrarian 
duties at the time of Capri vi's commercial policy 
brought about a crisis in our agriculture which it was 

286 



England's Position 

only able to weather by dint of working with stubborn 
energy, and in the hope that there would soon be a 
more favourable arrangement of our tariffs. If we 
had sacrificed the protective tariff on agricultural pro- 
ducts in order to lower the cost* of living by means 
of cheap imports, the danger would have arisen that 
agricultural work would grow more and more un- 
profitable, and would have had to be given up to a 
greater and greater extent. We should have gone the 
way England has gone. 

During the last winter of my tenure of office, I once 
explained to an English statesman how utterly un- 
founded and even nonsensical was the English fear of 
a German attack, let alone a German invasion. Where- 
upon he replied: "All you say is right, and, so far as 
I am personally concerned, you tell me nothing new. 
But with regard to English public opinion and the man 
in the street, you must not forget that England's posi- 
tion is very different from that of the Continental 
Powers. France suffered a terrible defeat, but a few 
years after Gravelotte and Sedan she had recovered so 
far that it was possible to contemplate * war in sight.' 
Almost as quickly Austria got over the effects of 1859 
and 1866. After the Japanese War, in spite of serious 
defeats on land and at sea, and of a grave revolution, 
Russia's favour did not cease to be courted on more 
than one side. England is different. Eighty per cent, 
of our population lives in towns. Our agriculture is 
unable to produce more than a fifth of the wheat and 
a half of the meat consumed in England. If our navy 
were defeated, and England were cut off from foreign 
trade, within a very few weeks we should be reduced 

287 



Imperial Germany 

to the choice between starvation and anarchy on the 
one hand and an unconditional peace on the other." 

Countries where agriculture flourishes, countries 
where at least a majority of the population is engaged 
in tilling the soil, where agriculture supplies the home 
market in part, and provides a large portion of the 
necessary foodstuffs, have greater powers of resistance 
in critical times, and recover far more easily after such, 
than countries that are dependent entirely on com- 
merce and industry. Carthage experienced that as 
opposed to Rome. Even the highest industrial wages 
are of no avail if the workman can buy no food in the 
country with his money. 

And this state of affairs can arise if, in time of war, 
the frontiers are wholly or largely closed, and home agri- 
culture is not in a position to provide a sufficient amount 
of foodstuffs. What we might have gained in peace, 
and for the moment, by surrendering our agriculture 
to foreign competition, we should ultimately have had 
to pay for in war with misery, hunger and their fatal 
consequences to the State and society. [Nothing could 
more strikingly prove the correctness of the economic 
policy initiated by the Tariff Law of 1902 than the 
economic experiences of the world war. Owing to mili- 
tary events on the land frontiers Germany was deprived 
of all imports, and she was cut off from all oversea 
connections by England's superior sea power; thus 
from the beginning of the war the German Empire 
was forced into that economic isolation which England 
feared, and always must fear for herself, in case of a 
defeat at sea. 

Germany, however, was spared the catastrophe which 

2m 



Stimulation of Agriculture 

would overtake England, and that by the pro- 
ductiveness of German agriculture. Certainly not 
without difficulty, but nevertheless with complete 
success, since the beginning of the war German agri- 
culture has solved the mighty problem of feeding the 
whole German civil population, the millions of German 
soldiers and the millions of prisoners of war with the 
products of German husbandry and cattle breeding. 
This tremendous achievement is mainly rendered pos- 
sible by the unparalleled development of intensive cul- 
ture in Germany. Although in the course of the last 
decades the acreage under culture has increased very 
slightly, and although it has become more and more 
difficult to obtain agricultural labour, German agri- 
culture has nevertheless steadily increased its produc- 
tion, so that to-day it may justly claim to be the most 
productive and efficient in the world. 

Agriculturists, however, could only be stimulated 
to the effort of getting the utmost out of the soil, 
and the best out of the stock, if they had the 
assurance that with an increase in productiveness 
there would be a corresponding increase in profit. 
They did not have this assurance during the time 
of the Caprivi-Marschall economic policy, but they 
obtained it by means of the Tariff Laws of 1902. 
The tariff of 1902 is assuredly one of the essential 
promises for victory in this war. It meant the 
reorganisation of Germany's national economic powers 
of resistance, powers which have wrecked the attempt 
to wage an economic war against Germany.] 

It is the duty of the State to look aftej- the welfare 
of all classes of workers and the people in general. It 
T 289 



Imperial Germany 

must not allow an industry of economic importance, 
like agriculture, which is indispensable to the nation, 
to suffer in order that other branches of industry may 
thrive the more easily and quickly. The State must 
grant its aid in proportion to individual needs, and 
must make the nation in general share the necessary 
burdens. 

As it is right that the working classes should re- 
ceive direct grants from the Imperial exchequer, so it 
is right that the existence of agriculture should be in- 
directly assured by means of the tariff. Both are a 
nohile officium of the State. It is just as misleading 
to speak of favouritism in regard to agriculture because 
of the policy of protective duties, as it would be to 
speak of favouritism towards the working classes because 
of our social policy. 

True justice on the part of the State does not lie 
in granting or refusing the same thing to each class, 
each trade, or each citizen, so that there may be no 
external differences; that would only be mechanical 
justice. Real justice lies in giving to each, as far as 
is possible, what he most needs. This is the justice 
I meant when, two months before the introduction of 
the Tariff Bill, at a dinner on September 21, 1901, 
given me at Flottbeck, my birthplace, by the provincial 
diet of Pinneberg, I defined the economic policy of His 
Majesty's Government as one that desired to give to 
each what he required, true to the old motto of the 
Hohenzollern, " Suum cuique" 

Our tariff policy has to fulfil a double purpose. 
It must, on the one hand, by means of sufficient pro- 
tection, maintain home products in agriculture and 

290 



A Protective Tariff 

industry in a position to compete with foreign goods. 
On the other hand, by means of commercial treaties 
of long duration, it must keep the foreign markets open 
to our industrial exports and foreign trade. 

In order to accomplish this first task we had to 
surround ourselves with a barrier of duties; in order to 
do justice to the second we had to arrange our protec- 
tive tariff in such a way as not to make it impossible for 
other countries to conclude commercial treaties with us 
on terms which are more or less acceptable to them. 
Commercial treaties are like mercantile business con- 
tracts. Both parties ask more than they expect to get 
ultimately, and gradually reduce their demands, until, 
on the basis of some middle course, the business is 
concluded. Both parties try to obtain the greatest 
possible advantages at the smallest possible cost. The 
salient point for the State is this, to see that no im- 
portant economic interests are sacrificed. A middle 
course must be found between protective tariffs and 
commercial policy by means of which agriculture, 
commerce and industry can progress equably and side 
by side. 

Owing to a momentary standstill in exports the 
Caprivi-Marschall Tariff Policy was directed entirely 
towards commercial treaties. In order to be able to 
conclude favourable commercial treaties as easily and 
rapidly as possible, foreign countries were offered a 
reduction in the duty on corn. But the opinion of 
clever business men, that the demands of the other 
parties increase in proportion as they are offered more, 
proved to be right in the end. The important com- 
mercial treaty with Russia, who derived great advan- 

29 1 



Imperial Germany 

tages from the reduction in the duties on cereals, was 
only concluded after negotiations which lasted three 
full years and were interrupted by a tariff war. 

Agriculture had to pay for the commercial treaties, 
since it had for the space of twelve years to work 
under considerably less favourable conditions, owing 
to the reduction in the corn tax from 5 to 3^ marks. 
That was, as Bismarck expressed it at the time, a leap 
in the dark. 

The commercial treaties themselves, of course, had 
a very stimulating effect on trade. But this was at. the 
expense of a great industrial class, indissolubly bound 
up with the economic welfare of the whole nation and 
with our great national traditions; this class, feeling 
slighted, fell into a condition of violent unrest and 
excitement. 

It cannot be denied that, owing to an economic 
policy that, by injuring one class of industry, favoured 
the others, the economic differences in the nation were 
intensified. Up to the beginning of the 'nineties agri- 
culture had on the whole advanced hand in hand with 
the other industries. Now it assumed a defensive posi- 
tion, formed the Association of Farmers in 1893, a very 
strong organisation which, in common with all societies 
representing economic interests, gradually grew more 
and more intemperate in its tone. The belief that 
commerce and export industries gain, if agriculture 
loses, has its origin in the early 'nineties. This mis- 
take introduced a factor of dissension and unrest into 
our home politics, which has often acted in a disturbing 
manner, calculated to hinder development. 

It was the task of the new century to find a just 

292 



An Agrarian Foundation 

compromise in economic policy, in the interests of agri- 
culture. This was necessary, not only for reasons of 
State justice, but, above all, because it became clear 
that the belief that agriculture could prosper in spite 
of the tariff reductions had not been justified. There- 
fore, in the year 1901, I introduced the new Tariff 
Bill, on the basis of which new commercial treaties were 
to be concluded which should consider the legitimate 
interests of agriculture. By placing our commercial 
policy on an agrarian foundation, we gave added 
strength to the economic life of the nation. But the 
change to agrarian policy must not be accomplished 
in such a way as to be a hindrance or, what would be 
worse, a set-back to the development of commerce; 
i.e. the new tariff must make it possible to conclude 
favourable commercial treaties of long duration. 

The "middle course" that I gave out as a watch- 
word before the tariff fight, was thus clearly indicated. 
If the whole enterprise was not to come to grief it was 
necessary to be moderate on the agrarian side as well. 
In the preamble to the Government's Bill it was said : 
"Germany's future commercial policy will have to be 
founded on the principle that measures in favour of 
export industry must not lead to a reduction in the 
protective duties which are indispensable to agriculture. 
On the other hand, export industries will be entitled 
to expect that consideration of agriculture, at their 
expense, shall not go beyond what is absolutely need- 
ful." This problem was set us by the tariff laws, and 
in the course of long parliamentary battles, fought 
with almost unexampled obduracy, it was solved. 

As soon as the new tariff rates were made known, 

293 



Imperial Germany 

the Free Trade Press declared that it would be impos- 
sible to conclude commercial treaties on the basis of 
this new tariff : the end of German commercial policy 
was said to be at hand. The extreme Agrarian papers 
were of the opinion, on their part, that the tariff would 
not satisfy even the most unpretentious farmers. The 
Socialist Press said : " Down with the extortionate 
tariff." The Government was attacked on both flanks 
and had to break through in the middle in order to 
carry its work, which was in the interests of the whole 
community and especially of agriculture, to a successful 
finish. 

If two extreme views or demands are opposed to 
each other, then, in politics as in life, common sense 
and truth usually lie midway between them. Free 
trade democracy demanded that agriculture should be 
sacrificed to commercial policy. The Association of 
Farmers demanded that the prospect of commercial 
treaties should be sacrificed to agrarian policy. One 
was as impossible as the other. Only if the Govern- 
ment remained inflexible on the main points, if it did 
not allow itself to be dragged over by the opposition 
on the Right or on the Left, could it hope to see the 
parties, when they had moderated their demands, agree 
to the middle course which it had planned. The Social 
Democrats and Ultra-Liberal Association resorted to 
obstruction in order to make an objective discussion of 
the clauses of the Bill impossible, and so force a General 
Election. With praiseworthy impartiality, the deputy 
Eugen Richter, although he and his party friends were 
not in favour of the tariff proposals, protested in the 
name of the Ultra-Liberal People's party against this 

294 



Tariff in the Reichstag 

violence offered to the majority by the obstruction of the 
minority. 

For a time it seemed as if it would be impossible to 
get a majority for the Tariff Bill, as part of the Right, 
on the principle of "everything or nothing," seemed 
inclined to refuse the whole tariff reform, undertaken 
in the interests of agriculture. It was greatly to the 
credit of the Chairman of the German Agricultural 
Council, Count Schwerin-Lowitz, of Count Kanitz, who 
unfortunately died in the prime of life, and, above all, 
of the leader of the Conservative party at that time, 
Count Limburg-Stirum, that they did not allow the 
Conservative party to embark on a wrong course. The 
deputy, Herr Bassermann, showed equally praiseworthy 
insight and power of resistance with regard to the free 
trade tendencies of a section of the Liberals. Thus 
Conservatives, National Liberals and the Centre, led 
with statesmanlike ability by Count Ballestrem and the 
deputy, Herr Spahn, met on the ground of the motion 
proposed by the free Conservative deputy, Herr von 
Kardorff. 

Thanks to the Tariff Law of 1902, our economic 
policy regained that agrarian bias so indispensable to 
the interests of the whole community. Side by side 
with the foreign trade, advancing with such mighty 
strides, the maintenance of a strong home industry was 
secured. 

German agriculture, under the influence of the new 
tariff and of the commercial treaties based on it, has 
experienced a decade of vigorous development. Our 
robust and hardworking farmers recovered the feeling 
that the Empire had an interest in the success of their 

295 



Imperial Germany 

work; that it no longer looked upon agriculture as an 
industrial stepchild, but as one having equal rights 
and, indeed, as the first-born of its mother Germania. 
The number of agricultural undertakings increased by 
nearly 180,000 between 1895 ^^^ iQO?* The amount of 
live stock increased enormously, cattle by about 
3,000,000 head, pigs by about 5,300,000, in the same 
space of time. The harvest of rye in 1913 was 
12,200,000 tons^ as against 6,600,000 in 1895; wheat, 
4,650,000 tons, as against 2,800,000; barley, 3,670,000 
tons, as against 2,400,000; oats, 9,700,000 tons, as 
against 5,200,000; potatoes, 54,100,000 tons, as against 
31,700,000 tons. In 1900 we imported 16 per cent, of 
grain for bread from abroad, in 1906 only 10 per cent. 

In comparison with the agriculture of other coun- 
tries, ours has developed quite extraordinarily in the 
last decade. In the summer of 1902, not long before the 
second debate on the tariff, the historian of German 
agriculture. Dr. Freiherr von der Goltz, had to conclude 
the opening remarks of his work with the statement 
that, "owing to events in the sphere of national and 
international economics, German agriculture was pass- 
ing through a critical period." To-day, qualified 
judges of agricultural conditions point proudly to the 
flourishing development, the growing value of the yield 
and the increased power of production (which is capable 
of still further increase) of German agriculture. 

But the agricultural development has not taken place 
at the cost of the expansion of our industrial export 
trade or of our commerce. The free trade prophets, 

* The German ton is not quite so much as the English, being equal 
to 2,205 lb- avoirdupois. 

296 



Treaty with Russia 

who in the debates of 1901 and 1902 prophesied that the 
agrarian trend of our economic policy would "restrict 
commerce," have proved wrong. Those who believed 
that it would not be possible to conclude favourable 
commercial treaties of long duration, on account 
of the increased agrarian duties, had underestimated 
Germany's economic importance in the world. 

Germany, with the weapon of her new tariff in her 
hand, had by no means too little to offer other countries ; 
in 1 89 1 she had offered too much. When introducing 
the Caprivi-Marschall Tariff and Commercial Policy, 
the assumption had been made, amongst others, that 
the excess of our imports over our exports must force 
us to special concessions in order to open the foreign 
markets still further to us. As a matter of fact, the 
large amount of our imports, our ability to buy, was 
the strongest point in our position when concluding 
our commercial treaties. We could expect concessions 
because we are such excellent customers of foreign 
countries. We were able successfully to make use of 
the relation between our imports and our exports in the 
opposite sense to that employed at the beginning of 
the 'nineties. 

The commercial treaty with Russia, round which a 
contest raged between 1891 and 1894, was concluded 
between Count Witte and myself with comparatively 
little difficulty in Norderney in July, 1904. The other 
commercial treaties followed, and in no case did the 
new tariff prove an insurmountable obstacle. 

[At the decisive sitting of the Reichstag on Decem- 
ber 13, 1902, probably the longest sitting the German 
Reichstag has ever held, I made an introductory speech, 

297 



Imperial Germany 

in which I explained the attitude of the governments of 
the Federated States toward the decisions reached by 
the Reichstag at the second reading; in conclusion, I 
expressed the conviction that the great work of Tariff 
Reform would prove a blessing for the Fatherland. 
This met with violent applause on the one hand and 
equally violent opposition on the other. 

The hope I then expressed has been fulfilled, and 
not only with regard to agriculture. The telegram which 
the directors of the Hamburg-Amerika Line sent me 
on my retirement confirmed this, for they emphasised the 
fact that during my tenure of the Chancellorship there 
had been the most vigorous development and prosperity 
in industry, commerce and trade that Germany had 
ever seen.] 



298 



CHAPTER XXI 

THE ECONOMIC FUTURE OF GERMANY 

Our future economic development will largely de- 
pend on our maintaining the principles of commercial 
policy which made such progress possible, and on our 
preserving the security and advantages in commercial 
politics which we possessed before the war. And in 
forecasting the economic situation of our nation after the 
war, we must surely take into account, besides the two 
million German colonists in Russia, the pioneers of 
German trade who, before the war, in North and South 
America, in the Far East, in North and South Africa, 
in the whole of France and England, in the English 
Colonies, in all important centres of commerce in the 
world, had started and managed so many prosperous 
enterprises, and everywhere promoted the success of 
German work and of the German people. 

In this direction we have been particularly hard hit 
by the war, not only in enemy lands but also in 
neutral countries. We must expect that it will be found 
possible to take up again the connections which were 
so suddenly broken by the world war, to compensate to 
some extent those who have suffered, and to repair 
part, if not all, of the damage.] 

The rapid growth of general prosperity between the 
years 1904 and 1914 is quite obvious. Up to August i, 
1914, the number of persons employed in commerce 

299 



Imperial Germany 

and industry was continually on the increase, as was 
the number of large undertakings. To take one ex- 
ample from among many, the official statistics in the 
year 191 1 report 4,712 commercial companies with a 
capital of 18,060 million marks, which pay yearly 
dividends to the amount of about 1,300 million. The 
large private banks have become a power, not only in 
the industrial world, but in the sphere of economic 
policy. German imports in general rose between 1903 
and 1913 from 6,300 million marks to 11,600 million; 
exports, from 5,300 million to 10,900 million. An^ 
following the development of foreign trade, the Ger- 
man mercantile marine increased (in 1,000 gross 
registered tonnage) from 2,650 in 1900 to 4,267 in 
1909, to 4,513 in 191 1, and 5,238 in 1914. In the Ger- 
man shipyards the construction of ships, including 
river craft and warships, rose from 385 in 1900 to 814 
in 1909, 859 in 191 1, and to 936 in 1913. Since, at 
the same time, during the last decade, social provision 
has not only been further developed for the working 
classes, but has been extended to the middle classes, 
we may say that all classes engaged in trades and pro- 
fessions have maintained and developed their flourishing 
condition since our economic policy took an agrarian 
turn, while agriculture has been rescued from a critical 
condition, and has taken its place in the ranks of the 
general, thriving development of German industrial life. 
From the economic point of view in particular the 
German nation has reason to be content with the result 
of their development during the last decade, and to hope 
that the courses on which they have embarked, and 
which have proved so profitable, will not be abandoned. 

300 



Placating the Workman 

The advantages gained by commerce and export through 
the inauguration of commercial policy at the beginning 
of the ^nineties have been maintained. The whole of 
German industry has been able uninterruptedly to enjoy 
the protection of the tariff granted in the year 1878. 
Individual defects of the Caprivi tariff were remedied 
in favour of industry by the tariff of 1902. Finally, 
German agriculture has acquired the necessary pro- 
tective duties. 

More has been done for the workmen in Germany 
than in any other country. When, a few years ago, a 
deputation of English Trades Unions made a circular 
tour through Germany, to study the conditions of our 
working classes, one of the Englishmen, after being 
made acquainted with our arrangements for the welfare 
of the working man, asked one of his German guides 
(a Social Democrat, by the way) in astonishment, "But 
why then do you go on agitating?" 

If, in spite of everything, we have not achieved in- 
dustrial peace ; if [up to the war] the antagonism between 
different industrial classes continued to be violent ; if, on 
the contrary, passion ran higher in the field of industry, 
and the quarrels and hatred between the various indus- 
trial classes were bitterer than ever, the cause did not 
lie in any defect or any lack of adjustment in our 
economic policy, but in the imperfection of our home 
politics. 

Just as in purely political questions the German 
parties as a rule determined their attitude not by con- 
siderations of expediency, but by their hostility for the 
time being to one party or another, so they did to a far 
greater extent on questions of economic policy. Ger- 

301 



Imperial Germany 

many was probably the only country in which practical 
economic questions were weighed with scrupulous care 
in the party balance. With the single exception of the 
Centre, every party, great or small, had its own economic 
policy, or, at least, its own speciality in economic policy, 
to which economic questions were subordinated. That 
was part and parcel of party dogmatism. We had 
almost as many different conceptions of financial policy, 
agrarian policy, commercial policy, trade policy, social 
policy, tariff policy, taxing policy and other kinds of 
economic policy, as we had parties. The German party 
man got so wrapped up in the views of his party on 
economic questions that soon, by auto-suggestion, he 
came to consider these views as indissolubly bound up 
with his own trade interests and his own livelihood, 
and, so far as economic matters were concerned, carried 
on party warfare with a violence that is usually inspired 
by selfishness. We have no party that can say that 
it represents only one single form of industry ; not even 
the Social Democrats can assert that of themselves. 

Nevertheless, with the exception of the Centre 
[ — whose supporters and representatives are drawn from 
all classes of the population and from every trade and pro- 
fession — ] every party has often carried on the struggle 
in economic politics more or less as if for each one it 
were a question of representing one particular interest. 
True, the Conservatives drew their support chiefly from 
landed property, the National Liberals from industry, 
and the Ultra-Liberals from commerce. That is due to 
the political traditions of the various classes. But if the 
parties developed more and more into representatives 
of the interests of special professions and trades, that 

302 



Glass Irreconcilability 

involved great dangers with regard to economic, 
political and national questions. 

If the different industrial classes confront each other 
a^ so many political parties, it will no longer be possible 
to dispose of questions of economic policy in such a 
manner as to profit all branches of industry. The 
different interests will become totally irreconcilable. 
Each class will see its own gain in the other's loss. 
And the industrial differences will, if the Government 
is not in strong hands, be decided, like party struggles 
for power, by beating the minority party by a majority 
vote, with a total disregard of the interests of whole 
industrial classes. 

On the other hand, professional and industrial classes 
are rarely capable of deciding great national questions 
independently, with a view to the position of the Empire 
in the world, instead of to their own professional in- 
terest. And they are the less capable of this the more 
a national task involves material sacrifies. An amalga- 
mation of the ideas of party politics with those of an 
industrial class constitutes an equally great danger for 
national and for industrial life. 

[As the trying experiences of the war have given good 
ground for hope that party antagonism will gradually 
but steadily become less marked, and that party-political 
dogmatism will be moderated, so they have actually 
brought about the establishment of cordial relations 
between great economic associations that were bitterly 
hostile to one another before. Taking into considera- 
tion the international lessons to be learnt from the war 
and the future position of the German Empire in the 
world, our six great Industrial Associations have in 

303 



Imperial Germany 

praiseworthy manner joined forces on the subject of the 
most important problem of Germany's present and 
future, the problem of Germany's political and economic 
position in Europe and the world, as it will be deter- 
mined by the war ; and they have manifested unanimous 
and patriotic determination. That constitutes a grave 
warning to foreigners who are counting upon the old 
party and industrial dissensions in Germany. A bril- 
liant prospect opens out for Germany's future home 
policy, the most urgent task of which will be the re- 
establishment of economic life after the war. If the 
Governments of the Empire and of the German States 
secure and keep the support of the productive classes in 
this work, which will be one of stupendous and un- 
dreamt-of difficulty, we may legitimately hope that at 
no distant date the progress of prosperous economic 
development, which this war has so suddenly cut short, 
will be resumed. Home policy in time of peace will 
have to fulfil no task consequent upon the war that is 
more important or more necessary for the happiness of 
the whole nation than this.] 



304 



CHAPTER XXII 

CONCLUSION! 

The German Empire, such as it emerged from the 
baptism of fire of Koniggratz and Sedan, the belated 
fruit of the slow evolution of our nation, could not 
come into existence until German intellect and the 
Prussian monarchy joined forces. They were bound 
to join forces if a united German State of lasting power 
was to be achieved. 

German history, eventful as it is, discloses an 
abundance of great and mighty deeds : the struggle of 
the German Emperors for the heritage of the Caesars, 
German arms victorious on the shores of the Great Belt 
and the Mediterranean, in Asia Minor, and in the heart 
of what is now France; and after the intellectual re- 
fining process of the Reformation, the greatest develop- 
ment of artistic and scientific life that the world has 
known since the days of Hellas and the Cinquecento. 

The result, however, of these glorious activities, 
as far as the State and politics are concerned, was the 
dissolution of all forms of government in the nine- 
teenth century, and the fact that German power was 
outstripped by the younger States of Eastern and 
Western Europe. In a thousand years of work, from 
the point of view of culture, the highest had been ac- 
complished, but politically, nothing had been achieved. 
* Almost wholly new, see brackets. 

u 305 



Imperial Germany 

The Western and Southern domains of Germany, 
greatly favoured by Nature, accomplished indestructible 
work in the sphere of German intellectual life, but could 
not raise sufficient strength for the sterner business of 
creating a State. 

We modern Germans do not share Treitschke's harsh 
opinion that the small German States were worthless. 
During the decades in which we have enjoyed union as 
an Empire, we have recovered a clear perception of the 
manifold blessings we owe to the small States. Side by 
side with the sins of German separatism we must place 
the encouragement and protection afforded to the in- 
tellectual life of Germany by the Princes and the cities. 
The Court of the Muses at Weimar achieved the 
highest in this respect, but it by no means stood alone. 

The history of most of the non-Prussian States is 
connected with the name of some one or other of the 
men of Science and of Art who have helped to raise 
the magnificent edifice of our intellectual life. When 
Prussia woke to a consciousness of her duties with 
regard to the spiritual achievements of Germany, in 
those terrible but yet splendid years when, as Frederick 
William III. so well expressed it, the Prussian State 
must make good by its intellectual powers what it had 
lost physically. German intellect had already reached 
its zenith without the help of Prussia. Gennan in- 
tellectual life, which the whole world has learned to 
admire, and which even the first Napoleon respected, is 
predominantly the work of the South and West, 
achieved under the protection of her Princes, small 
States, and free cities. 

But the people who lived on the sandy soil of the 

306 



Prussian Culture 

Mark, in the plains east of the Elbe and the Oder, 
so scantly favoured by Nature, during the centuries 
which witnessed the growth of German culture in 
other parts of the country, prepared the future of 
Germany as a State in battles and privations under the 
rule of heroic and politic Kings. 

German intellect was developed in the West and 
the South, the German State in Prussia. The Princes 
of the West were the patrons of German culture; the 
Hohenzollern were the political teachers and task- 
masters. 

It took a long time before the importance of Prussia, 
in which even Goethe only loved her great King, was 
recognised in Germany; before it was realised that this 
rude and thoroughly prosaic State of soldiers and 
officials, without many words but with deeds that 
were all the greater, was performing a task of enormous 
importance in the work of German civilisation : pre- 
paring the political culture of the German nation. 
Prussia became for Germany what Rome was for the 
ancient world. Leopold von Ranke, intellectually the 
most universal and at the same time the most 
Prussian of German historians, says, in his "History 
of the World," that it was the task of antiquity to per- 
meate the Greek spirit with the Roman. Classical 
culture, in which the intellectual life of Western Europe 
is rooted, was preserved by the Roman State, which, 
with its legal and military foundation, gave to the 
ancient world its political shape. The Prussian State 
became the guardian of German intellectual life, by 
giving to the German people a united State and a 
position on a level with the great Empires of the world. 

307 



Imperial Germany 

Through the foundation of the Empire we acquired 
national life as a State. In so doing our political 
development embarked on a new and a safe course. 
But it has not yet reached its goal. Our task has been 
begun but is by no means yet completed. 

We must secure and cement the unity of our in- 
tellectual and political life by the fusion of the Prussian 
and the German spirit. [That is what I meant when, 
not long before my retirement, I said in the Reichstag, 
with reference to the fact that in the death chamber of 
Prince Bismarck the only ornament I noticed on the 
wall was the portrait of Ludwig Uhland, that this juxta- 
position summed up all German history, for only the 
union between the energy and discipline of old Prussian 
Conservatism and the magnanimous spirit of German 
Liberalism could ensure a happy future for the nation. 
A century ago Fichte challenged the nation to overcome 
the difference between thought and being within itself, 
and thus consciously to create itself; this challenge is 
also addressed to us.] Prussian State life and German 
intellectual life must become reconciled in such a way 
that both their growths become intertwined without 
weakening each other. 

Such a reconciliation had not quite been achieved 
before the great war in which we are now engaged. 
The representative of German intellectual life was 
still sometimes inclined to regard the Prussian 
State as a hostile power, and the old Prussian at 
times to regard the free and untrammelled develop- 
ment of German intellect as a destructive force. And 
again and again in Parliament and in the Press accusa- 
tions were levelled [in the name of freedom against 

308 



State Differences 

Prussia, and in the name of order against the un- 
dauntable German intellect, which in its breadth, its 
philosophic depth and its poetic charm has never been 
equalled since the days of the Greeks.] 

My late friend, Adolph Wilbrandt, in a pleasing 
play, has a scene between an official belonging to the 
North German nobility and the daughter of a savant 
of the middle classes. At first they repel each other 
and quarrel. "I represent the Germany of Schiller, 
Goethe and Lessing," says the woman, and the man 
replies: "And I represent the Germany of Bismarck, 
Bliicher and Moltke." We often hear similar things 
from the lips of clever and serious men. Our [in- 
tellectual and political] future depends on whether, and 
to what extent, we succeed in amalgamating German 
intellect with the Prussian monarchy. 

It is quite true that in many cases in non-Prussian 
Germany, owing to other political traditions, concep- 
tions of State rule and freedom prevail that are funda- 
mentally different from those that have sprung from 
the soil of Prussian traditions. This distinction is 
found, not only in party differences, but in the parties 
themselves. In the South of Germany there is a 
tendency to slacken the reins of political powers below, 
in Prussia a tendency to tighten them from above. In 
the former case a conception of political life more from 
the intellectual standpoint; in the latter more from 
the standpoint of the State. Each of them is the 
result of historical growth and is justified in its peculi- 
arity. The Prussian does wrong if he refuses to see 
anything but destructive democracy in the political life 
of South Germany : the South German is equally 

309 



Imperial Germany 

wrong if he exclaims in horror at the antiquated 
politics of Prussian State life. 

Progress in political life is a very fluid idea, and in 
what direction of political development true progress 
will lie is more than all the wise men of the world 
can tell. [The fulfilment of Conservative demands has 
often, from the historical point of view, denoted real 
progress in the best sense of the word; whereas when 
looked upon with the appraising eye of history. Demo- 
cratic and Liberal demands sometimes appear definitely 
reactionary.] Each State, each nation tries to advance 
and to perfect its political institutions according to its 
own way of thinking. 
' We Germans, who for historical reasons have not a 
uniform but a manifold political life, are the last nation 
in the world that can afford to indulge in abstract 
political principles, either such as are derived only from 
Prussian or such as are derived only from South Ger- 
man traditions, and to fit all politics to these principles. 
It is our task to conduct political development in 
Prussia, the individual States and the Empire in such 
a way that in each member of the Empire those forces 
are preserved which tend to make it most valuable to 
the Fatherland in general. Harmony of German life 
in all its parts must be attained, not so much by making 
all institutions in the north, south, east and west uni- 
form, as in smoothing the differences that still exist. 

Bismarck's foundation of the Empire was not least 
masterly in that it created a firm bond of union, while 
at the same time it did not destroy the peculiarities 
and the independence of the individual States; and 
also in that it not only nominally, but actually, made 

;2io 



Separatist Tendencies 

Prussia the leading State by preserving the monarchic 
principle in the new Empire. 

The union of Germany that the patriotic Democrats 
conceived in the 'forties of the nineteenth century was 
to do away with the independence of the Federal States, 
more or less, and to vest the unifying power in the 
paramount influence of an Imperial Parliament. Apart 
from the fact that the German Princes would never 
have consented to such a union, it was a mistake in a 
thoroughly monarchic country like Germany to expect 
unifying power from parliamentary life which, so far 
from having been tested, had not even come into 
existence. 

That in a common representative assembly of the 
German people the forces tend rather to separate than 
to unite in the idea of the Empire and in great national 
tasks, has been amply proved by the struggles between 
the Imperial Government and the parties in the Reichs- 
tag during the years which have passed since the found- 
ing of the Empire. 

Bismarck, the Prussian, realised better than anyone 
else that in Germany strong government could only be 
based and maintained on the monarchic principle. 
The work of union could only be permanent if the 
monarchy was not a purely ornamental part of the fabric 
of the Empire, but was made to be the actual support of 
the union. 

And if the creative power of Prussian monarchy, 
well tested in the course of centuries, was to be enlisted 
in the interests of the new Empire, then the King of 
Prussia must, as German Emperor, be more than the 
bearer of shadowy dignities; he must rule and guide — 

311 



Imperial Germany 

and for this purpose must actually possess monarchic 
rights such as have been laid down and transcribed 
in the Constitution of the Empire. 

Germany would never, or at best very slowly and 
imperfectly, have achieved union as a State by follow- 
ing the paths of democracy along which other nations 
have reached the goal of national development. As a 
monarchy, with the Federal Princes represented in the 
Federal Council, and the King of Prussia at the head, 
we have become a united German Empire. Had we 
been entrusted entirely to the care of quarrelling parties 
in Parliament, the idea of the Empire would never have 
gained so much ground, would never have been able 
to win the heart of Germans to such an extent as is 
actually the case since the unity of the Empire was 
placed under the protection of the monarchy. 

At the beginning of the 'sixties in the nineteenth 
century, Crispi, later President of the Ministry in Italy, 
wrote to Mazzini that he had been converted from the 
Republic to the Monarchy, because the latter would 
unite Italy, whereas the former would disintegrate her : 
the same applies to us. And it is particularly true in 
our case because the German Empire, situated in the 
middle of Europe, insufficiently protected by Nature on 
its frontiers, [and surrounded by great military powers,] 
is and must remain a military State. And in history 
strong military States have always required monarchic 
guidance. 

[We have seen that at the moment when Germany's 
existence was seriously threatened on the outbreak of 
war, ail hearts turned spontaneously to our Imperial 
leader, all faith and confidence were placed in him. 

'^12 



A Strong Monarchy 

The whole German people expressed its devoted 
patriotism and loyalty to the State by an unpremeditated 
and instinctive manifestation of monarchic feeling. And 
during the whole course of these terrible struggles on 
all fronts and in all climes Germany has realised with 
satisfaction that, thanks to monarchic leadership, in 
the war she is superior to her opponents in her readiness 
to strike promptly and in the uniformity of her military 
action.] 

A strong monarchy at the head of affairs by no 
means precludes a lively interest on the part of the 
people in the political life of the Empire and the indi- 
vidual States. On the contrary, the more keen and 
intelligent the interest that all classes of the nation take 
in the development of political matters, the closer will 
grow the ties between the people and the monarchy, 
which as leader and guide stands at the head of national 
life. Political life in a modern monarchy, as created 
by our Constitution, entails co-operation between the 
Crown and the people. 

It is an old mistake to want to gauge the concern 
of the nation in political affairs solely by the rights 
granted to the representatives of the people. A Parlia- 
ment may possess very extensive rights and yet the 
nation may take very little interest in politics. Thus 
in France formerly. Parliament was sometimes all- 
powerful, whereas the people were indifferent. The 
relatively large measure of constitutional rights which 
the Reichstag and the Diets in Germany enjoy might 
be accompanied by far keener political interest and far 
deeper political understanding on the part of the nation, 
than has hitherto been the case. The so-called 



o»o 



Imperial Germany 

"politification of the people" is a matter of political 
education, not a question of parliamentary power. 

The statement uttered from time to time, that my 
idea was to change the distribution of power between 
the Crown and the Parliament in favour of the latter, 
that is, to introduce parliamentary government in the 
West European sense of the words, belongs to the 
thickly populated realm of political fables. In my eyes 
the dividing line between the rights of the Crown and 
of Parliament was immutably fixed. In foreign as well 
as in home politics I considered it my noblest task, to 
the best of my understanding and ability, to strengthen, 
support and protect the Crown, not only on account of 
deep loyalty and personal affection for the wearer, but 
also because I see in the Crown the corner-stone of 
Prussia and the keystone of the Empire. 

What we Germans need cannot be attained by 
alterations in the sphere of constitutional law. The 
parties which would acquire greater rights, to a large 
extent still lack political judgment, political training 
and consciousness of the aims of the State. In Germany 
a large number of educated people, who ought to play 
a leading part in party life, still adopt an attitude of 
indifference, if not of dislike towards politics. Very 
clever men often assert with a certain pride that they 
understand nothing and wish to know nothing of 
politics. The ignorance which prevails in regard to 
the most elementary matters of government is often 
astounding. 

Those times are past when it was of no concern to 
the welfare of the State whether the nation did or did 
not understand the laws under which it lived. Legis- 

314 



Glass Duties 

lation no longer lies exclusively in the hands of specially 
trained and experienced officials ; Parliament co-operates 
in the task. But the work of the factions is even now 
carried out much as the work of the officials alone used 
to be formerly : to the accompaniment of a complete 
lack of understanding and judgment on the part of 
large sections of the community. In connection with 
economic questions, it is true groups that are interested 
in agriculture, commerce and industry display a certain 
amount of activity, as do associations formed for special 
purposes when matters connected with these special 
purposes are in question ; for the most part, however, it 
may be said that the dictum of the members of Parlia- 
ment is accepted quite passively by the "beschrankten 
Untertanenverstand " (limited understanding of the sub- 
ject). But, as soon as the tangible effects are felt, 
bitter criticism is heard, which, however, is limited to 
the individual case and does not result in any stimu- 
lation of political understanding. 

What we Germans lack is active interest in the course 
of political affairs, interest that is not only aroused at 
elections which take place at considerable intervals, but 
that is concerned with all the great and small questions 
of political life. It is the duty of the educated classes 
to take this political education in hand — the duty of the 
intellectual leaders, whom the Germans follow more 
readily than does any other nation. It is their duty to 
enliven public spirit and to interweave the interest and 
the activity of the greatest possible number of classes 
with the demands of the State. The indolent indiffer- 
ence towards political life of men who are aesthetically 
and intellectually sensitive is now out of place. 

31S 



Imperial Germany 

1 [It is out of place with regard to home politics, and 
much more so as far as the great incidents of foreign 
politics are concerned. For a comparatively small num- 
ber of Germans, so-called greater politics have become 
a sort of hobby, but for the vast majority of the nation 
they are terra incognita. So far as opinions on the life 
of nations have been formed at all, partly they have 
emanated from party-political views, partly they were 
conclusions drawn from the abstract, scientific dogmas 
and conceptions, and for the rest they were based on 
sentiments and moral consciousness. The tendency to 
pursue a foreign policy determined by sympathies and 
antipathies, love or hatred, in accordance with middle- 
class notions of morality, preconceived ideas or abstract 
conceptions, is nowhere so strongly developed as 
amongst us. 

Not long after the declaration of the Rights of Man 
the French Jacobins showed an inclination towards 
theoretic politics and dogmatism, but Abbe Siey^s 
checked these propensities with the remark : " Les prin- 
cipes sont bons pour Vecole, les etats se gouvement 
selon leurs interets." 2 We continually run the risk of 
judging events abroad by our feelings instead of by 
our intelligence. Our lack of psychological insight is 
not unconnected with this. He who judges everything 
from the point of view of his own feelings will have 
difficulty in penetrating the mentality of others. The 
difficulty we experience in understanding other people's 
way of thinking, and in taking this into account, is 

' New matter from here to end. 

* Principles axe all very well for schools, states are governed in 
accordance with their interests. 

316 



Why Bismarck Excelled 

to a far greater extent than many other things that 
have been suggested the real reason for our unpopu- 
larity abroad, which we have so often, indeed too often, 
discussed.. 

Prince Bismarck was a past master in the art of 
handling men and nations; but then he thoroughly 
understood the foreign diplomatists and sovereigns, 
his opponents in the game, and foreign nations as well 
—partly owing to personal acquaintance with them and 
to sojourning abroad, but even more by means of his 
marvellous intuition ; he comprehended not only things 
and facts, but also men; he read their feelings, their 
mental and emotional processes and saw deep into their 
hearts. Just as an experienced angler has the right 
bait at hand for every fish, so he knew how to handle 
and lead men and nations according to their characters. 
I have often heard him say: "Diplomacy means work- 
ing in human material." Bismarck was rarely mis- 
taken in his estimate of the effects of his own actions 
or of the consequent reaction on the part of others, and 
he mostly foresaw the course of events with accuracy. 
He never made the mistake of assuming a didactic tone 
towards foreign nations, and when he discussed foreign 
conditions it was with an intimate knowledge of foreign 
mentality and only in cases where he could exactly 
foretell the effect of his words. 

Where such preliminary conditions are lacking a 
man merely lays himself open to ridicule if he worries 
about other folk's affairs and wants to enlighten them 
on their own interests. Like every man, every nation 
considers itself the best judge of its own interests; and 
no one cares to take an enemy's advice — at the very 

2^7 



Imperial Germany 

most, guessing the intention, one adopts the opposite 
course to that urged by one's opponent. Moreover, 
little is gained in international affairs by moralising 
and preaching. "What is the good," an experienced 
man once said to me, "of preaching to a lion on the 
wholesomeness of vegetable food? He will still con- 
tinue to have an appetite for blood. It is better to kill 
the lion, or anyway to cut his claws." 

We should not recommend our Kultur (civilisation) 
to others too often or too emphatically. The better 
course for us is calmly to declare that we Germans are 
striving to make our own country securer and stronger 
and not to proclaim ourselves the leaders of civilisa- 
tion, for the whole world fears such a hegemony 
more even than political supremacy. Further, this war 
turns upon political and economic problems of tre- 
mendous importance and range, upon the solution of 
which the welfare of our people will depend for gener- 
ations to come ; but it does not, properly speaking, turn 
upon questions of civilisation at all. The best kind of 
propaganda for German civilisation and the right way 
to protect it, to develop it and to spread it, is to keep 
our intellectual life free from impure foreign influences 
which are hurtful to it. What German genius was so 
successful in conquering and mastering the world as 
Richard Wagner ? And no one bowed down less than 
he did to all that is foreign to the German genius. 
It is sad to remember how soon after the glorious 
war of 1870-71 Sardou, Dumas, Augier and other 
mediocrities were played upon our stage much 
oftener than Otto Ludwig, Hebbel and Grillparzer; 
and it is painful to recall to what extent shallow 

318 



The Tide of Hatred 

foreign concoctions pushed the German Muse into the 
background up to the outbreak of war. The thanks 
we have received from those very foreign poets, writers 
and artists whom we acclaimed the most, may teach 
us to show more dignity and good taste in this respect 
in future. In all things, in the realm of art as in the 
field of poirtics, we attach far too much importance to 
the judgment of foreign countries. Bismarck had studied 
foreign lands with greater success than anyone else; 
he knew how to treat them, how to impress them, both 
men and nations ; but he was careful never to be caught 
himself. 

The higher the tide of hatred and rage, of injustice 
and envy, rises during this war and because of this war, 
the less will we allow ourselves to be deterred from pur- 
suing our aims, or to be diverted from them. In future 
let us not forget what a very small part gratitude plays 
in politics. In the life of nations a debt of gratitude, 
in that it hurts national pride, is more apt to lead to 
silent wrath than to true friendship. The wise founder 
of the Constitution of the United States, George Wash- 
ington, told his fellow-countrymen that there was no 
m.ore grievous error than to think that nations can act 
magnanimously and unselfishly toward each other. 

We must also be clear on the point that in politics 
it is not right alone that decides. Pitt, the greatest 
English statesman, said that the might of no realm 
would endure for longer than from sunrise to sunset 
if absolute justice were to prevail. It was a Frenchman, 
Pascal, who said that right without might is powerless, 
and might is mistress of the world. If right decided 
things, the world would have looked very different for 

319 



Imperial Germany 

the past three thousand years, and the German people 
would not have had to undergo such suffering as they 
were exposed to in the seventeenth and eighteenth 
centuries and up to the middle of the nineteenth 
century. 

Stress must be laid, however, upon the fact that 
it would be a gross mistake to confound a clear and 
robust practical policy with a misapprehension of the 
imponderables. Nothing is less in accordance with 
practical policy in the true sense of the word, or with a 
Bismarckian policy, than to overlook the importance of 
imponderables. We can learn from French, English 
and Russian history how largely our neighbours have 
been guided in their policy by their interests, their 
wish for power and their keen desire for mastery, both 
political and economic. But we can also learn from the 
history of our neighbours how clever they were on 
the banks of the Seine, of the Thames, and even of the 
Neva, at cloaking practical motives and instincts in 
high sounding words which make them seem beautiful. 
As the wise Greek said, men are moved not so much 
by things as by their views on things, and it is often 
not truth but the semblance of truth which rules the 
world. 

The man who pursues a practical policy knows 
better than anyone else what an important factor feeling 
is in the life of the nation, what weight imponderable 
things have, which, as Prince Bismarck said on February 
6, 1888, weigh far, far more heavily than material objects. 
A clumsy word, a thoughtless phrase, can do more 
harm at times than defeat in battle. It is a question 
whether ill-chosen words cannot do more damage than 

320 



Principles are Mischievous 

imprudent writings or even deeds, whether the Latin 
dictum, " Verba volant, scripta manent," might not 
more properly be reversed. The expression " coeur 
leger," which Emile Ollivier allowed to escape his lips 
in 1870 at the beginning of the war, straightway 
labelled the war for millions of people in the world, and 
the impression created by them persisted for many 
years. 

In practical politics and in the administration of 
affairs dogmatic adherence to principles and unpractical 
theories are mischievous. Ernest Renan, himself a 
philosopher, rightly said that philosophy had as little 
connection with politics as with mechanics or chemistry. 
The principles of practical politics must be applied in 
a practical manner, they must not be proclaimed from 
the housetops in the form of an extreme theory. Other- 
wise we shall cover Germany with odium, with an evil 
repute which our noble people assuredly do not deserve, 
for we have for centuries actually pursued a policy 
which is essentially more humane, and in the best sense 
of the word more idealistic, than France from the times 
of Philip the Fair, Henry IV. and Richelieu to those 
of Napoleon; than Russia from the days of Peter the 
Great and Catherine to the present time ; than England 
in all her history. 

Owing to our seriousness and our logic, owing also 
to our thoroughness, which at times becomes clumsi- 
ness, many a thing sounds cruder on German lips, and 
is more offensive when expressed in German fashion, 
than if it had been uttered by others. Pascal, probably 
the deepest French thinker, discriminated between the 
esprit geometrique and the esprit de finesse. The 
V 321 



Imperial Germany 

former causes much mischief in politics, the latter pre- 
vents many things and achieves some. 

The outbreak of v^ar v^as calculated to force the 
German nation with sudden violence to realise how 
greatly the course of foreign politics affects the fate of 
every German, and that questions of greater politics 
are like dynamite cartridges which, if they are clumsily 
handled anywhere in the world, may produce terrible 
explosions; it was calculated to show us how urgent is 
the necessity for cool judgment and sensible determina- 
tion where the web of international relations is con- 
cerned in which our national life, in its entirety and 
in its details, is entangled; how indispensable, in dealing 
with these relations, are experience, knowledge of men 
and things, psychological insight and the right esti- 
mation of others which it enables us to form; how de- 
sirable is that quality which the Frenchman describes 
by the untranslatable expression " le doigte," which 
Prince Bismarck demanded of everyone who had any- 
thing to do with foreign and diplomatic affairs. It 
depends upon the lever of the pointsman whether two 
railway trains pass one another or collide with fearful 
violence. 

Politics, as Prince Bismarck often said, is an art. 
Hence goodwill, which in matters of morality is every- 
thing, is of little or no account, and ability is the only 
thing that tells. A short time ago in the Reichstag a 
deputy opined very truly that all the misfortunes in 
the world arose from goodwill, coupled with incapa- 
city. We need a skilfully conducted foreign policy 
all the more because we are situated in the middle of 
Europe, wedged in between races hostile to us, and 

332 



After the War 

must always reckon with the possibility of attack. We 
have been encircled for a thousand years, ever since by 
the Treaty of Verdun the German tribes of Charles 
the Great were separated from the others and started 
life as an independent State under the Carolingian 
king named Ludwig the German. Hemmed in by 
Latins and Slavs, we must suit our foreign policy to our 
geographical position. 

The present, which is full of great and serious 
political problems, and still more so the future after 
the war, require a political generation. It is Germany's 
great hope that men of political insight will some day 
return home from the fiery ordeal by which their souls 
are tried in this gigantic struggle among the nations. 
Great-hearted men who will not let their considered 
judgment on practical questions of home politics be 
crippled by the pressure of the doctrines of party 
politics, strong-willed men who will demand of the 
Government as well a determined policy with great aims, 
which shall be energetically carried out. 

When from the bloody seed of this world war we 
shall reap the increased glory of the German Empire, 
the important point will be to concentrate the wealth of 
German intellect, the indestructible German capacity for 
work, the unwearied German energy upon the inter- 
rupted task of German progress. Fighting so tenaci- 
ously for more than eighteen months of warfare, the 
mighty powers and means at Germany's disposal have 
with invincible might and unshakable confidence in 
victory, mastered, and with God's help will continue to 
master the monstrous fate which overtook us so unex- 
pectedly. These powers were fostered and grew during 

323 



Imperial Germany 

forty-five years of work in times of peace — work which 
was restless, sometimes sombre and sullen, much de- 
bated, but always unwearied, steadfast and fruitful. 
This war was the tremendous test of the strength of the 
edifice erected in peace. Germany has stood the test. 
In April, 1813, Gneisenau, a great man at that time, 
wrote : " Prussia will never again be subjugated, for the 
whole nation participates in the struggle; it has de- 
veloped a greatness of character which makes it 
invincible." What was true of Prussia at that time 
is true of Germany to-day. 

Less than half a century of peaceful progress along 
the new path of history, into which Bismarck's strong 
hand had guided them, was vouchsafed to the German 
people. The German Empire, whose forces were welded 
together on battlefields, must now fight innumerable 
battles against a world of foes; and the German nation 
has met the threat of ruin with the determination to 
wrest from the struggle a glorious peace which shall 
clear and prepare the way to a brilliant future in inter- 
national politics. It was Germany's hope and Ger- 
many's desire to strengthen and develop her position 
among the nations of the world by peaceful work and 
competition. But it has ever been the fate of the German 
people, as it is at the present time, to fulfil its own 
destiny, and hence its destiny in the history of the 
world, by treading a thorny path. 

Our nation has never quarrelled with its fate, nor 
does it do so now. With wonderful unanimity and 
determination it shows the world that its will, its might, 
its courage rise superior to history and to destiny. It 
hopes and believes that these qualities, which no nation 

324 



Rewards of Peace 

has ever displayed with such deep and unswerving faith 
in God, such pure hearts, such simple acquiescence, 
with never-failing devotion and with such unanimity, 
will surely get its due reward: a peace worthy of such 
deeds and sacrifices, worthy of our past, a serious, real 
and secure guarantee for our future. 

It betokens an unscientific and unpractical mode of 
thought to assume that after this world war an era will 
dawn, which in its broad outlines as in its details is 
diametrically opposed to the past decades before the 
war, an era that will break with traditions and earlier 
development, instead of carrying them on. We are 
well aware of this. We cannot even desire it, for it is 
steady organic evolution, and not sudden change, which 
ensures sound growth. Taine, as the result of his life- 
long study of the French Revolution, came to the con- 
clusion that, "En fait d'histoire il vaut mieux continuer 
que recommencer."'^ We do, however, hope that the 
purifying, clarifying and civilising influence of the war, 
which we have seen at work in the course of the war, will 
continue to act on the intellectual and public life of 
Germany after it is over, on the nation in general, and 
in detail on the Government and the parties. But ex- 
perience teaches us that, however great the events, how- 
ever heavy the blows of fate, neither men nor circum- 
stances change suddenly or become the contrary of 
what they were before — especially not in Germany. 
Even the tremendous change betokened by the transition 
from Germany of the period of the Federated Diet, of 
the worthy small folk, to Germany, the new Empire and 

' Where history is concerned, it is better to continue than to 
begin afresh. 

325. 



Imperial Germany 

Great Power, left untouched the nature of the German, 
the roots of our character and the fundamental condi- 
tions of our existence. 

The number of problems a nation has solved is 
always small compared with the number that awaits 
solution. That was Germany's experience after the wars 
of liberation and the wars of union. The German 
nation knows it to-day too. It knows that Goethe de- 
picted the German nation in human guise, not in 
Wagner, who is filled with satisfaction by the contem- 
plation of all the fine things we have at last achieved, 
but in Faust who, with high self-confidence, ever strives 
to achieve more, and who gives utterance to this truth as 
the ultimate conclusion of wisdom : *' Nur der verdient 
sich Freiheit wie das Leben, Der taglich sie erobern 
muss," ^ 

May the consideration of the welfare of the country 
in Germany always prove stronger than party interests 
and the claims of special groups. May every German 
be ever conscious of the duties which two thousand 
years of history have imposed on us, a history which led 
us through the stormy times of the V oik er wan der ting 
(migration of nations), by way of Charles the Great and 
Frederick Barbarossa, by way of Fehrbellin and 
Leuthen, Leipzig and Waterloo, Koniggratz and 
Sedan. May every German at all times be ready to 
defend the Fatherland, may every German heart for all 
time subscribe to the sacred vow : Deutschland iiber 
alles 1] 

^ He alone deserves liberty and life who must conquer them 
daily anew. 



326 



INDEX 



Abdul Hamid, Sultan, 69 

Aboukir, Battle of. 22 

Africa, Gerraan interests in, 44 

Germans in, 299 
Agriculture and Free Trade, 275 

and the new tariff, 295 

as " ballast," 281 

effects of war on, 220 

in Germany, 272, 300, 301 

percentage of population em- 
ployed in, 281 

protection of, a national duty, 
282 

statistics, 296 

stimulation of, in Germany, 289 

vital importance of, 286 et seq. 
Alexander II.. Emperor. 72. 74 

and British policy ir Far East, 23 

attitude during Franco-German 
War, 73 
Algeciras, Conference of, 65, 98, 99, 
101 

French demands in, 56 

German struggle against France, 
55 

Italy and Germany. 66 
Alliance FrauQaise, the, 163 
Alsace, xliii 

French resentment at loss of, 80, 
83. 84, 91, 105 
Althoff, Ministerial Director, 161 
America, Germans in, 46, 299 

her position in the Great War. 46 

trade during Great War, 47 
America (North), English posses- 
sions in, 21 
American appreciation of German 
culture, 46 

inventions and Germany. 42 
Angerburg, 135 

Anglo-French entente, 80, 93, 107, 124 
Anglo-French Moroccan Treaty, 93 

an affront to German Empire. 96 
Anglo-German Alliance suggested, 32 

Treaty, 120 
Anglo-Russian Alliance, 78 
Anglo-Saxon egotism, 239 
Anglo-Spanish Treaty, 55 
Armaments and the Reichstag, 212 

et seq. 
Arnim, Count von, 116 
Asia Minor, German position in, 44 
Asquith, Rt. Hon. H. H., reply to 

German Chancellor, 111 
Austria and militarism. 131 

annexation of Bosnia and Herze- 
govina. 56 



Austria — continued 

Italy's declaration of war, 69 

relations with Italy. 63 
Austria-Hungary and Russia, xlvi 

refuses coalition with England, 55 
Austro-German Alliance, 56, 61. 74 



Bagdad Railway scheme, 120 
Balkan peoples, Bismarck on, 63 
Balkan States, Germany and, 70 
Balkan War, the first, cause of, 102 
Bailestrem, Count. 295 
Ballin, Herr, 127 
Bassermann, Herr, 295 
Bavarians, unique position of, 150 
Beaconsfield, liord (see Disraeli, 

Benjamin) 
Bebel, Herr, 220 
Belgium, 243 
Benedict XV., Pope. 206 
Berard, Victor, on Bismarck's dip- 
lomacy, 11 
Berlin, birth-rate in, 280 

Congress (1878), 56. 73. 74 

percentage of men fit for military 
service, 280 
Beyens, Baron, 107, 113 
Bismarck, Prince von, 73, 112, 149, 
308, 311, 320 

aohievements of, 11 

and Anglo-German Alliance, 32 

and German Federation, 2. 3 

and German unification, 7, 8 

Armv Bill of, 214 

article in Hamburger Nachrichten, 
76 

as Empire maker. 62 

birth of, 7 

concludes alliance with Austria- 
Hungary, 61, 74 

confirmation of, 7 

Continental policy of, 10, 11 

efforts for peace, 112, 113 

England's attitude towards Ger- 
many, 16, 29 

Herr Ballin and, 127 

his experience of the Party sys- 
tem. 174 

interview with von Biilow, 63. 64 

interviewed, 78 

iron rule of, 200 

masterly diplomacy of, 150 

memorable speech in the Reich- 
stag, 77 

on diplomacy. 317 

on Italy, 68 



327 



Index 



Bismarck, Prince von — continued 
on Poland. 252 
on politics, 322 
on relations with Russia, 75 
on Russia in Asia, 49 
on the " barbed wire of criticism," 

125 
political principles of, 187 
Quarrel with the Kaiser, 18, 19 
recognises dawn of a new era. 127 
" Renectious and Reminiscences," 

6, 190, 252 
Reinsurance Treaty, xlvi 76, 77, 

78, 79 
retirement of, 18 
Russian policy of. 74 
takes the reins in Prussia, 6 
unjust reproaches against, 75 
" Block " party in Germany. 127, 194, 

203, 209 
Blowitz, M. de, on Bismarck's dip- 
lomacy, 74 
Bllicher, 5, 232 

Boer War, the, and the German Em- 
pire, 36, 54, 78, 105, 124, 180 
France and, 105 

pro-Boer attitude of Germany, 30 
Bosnia and German commerce. 53 
Bosnia and Herzegovina, annexation 

of, 66 
Bosnian crisis, xxxix, 56, 57, 59, 79, 

124 
Boyen, Herr. 5. 152 
Boxer Rising, the. 118 
Brandenburg-Prussia, 129, 131, 133 
British Empire, the present-day, 21 

(see also England) 
British naval supremacy, 21 
British Navy and the Great War, 37 
Bulgaria, 71 
Bulgarian question, 76 
Btilow, Prince Bernhard von, and 
Austria-Hungary, 56 
combats reproaches on Italy, 66 
entrusted with conduct of foreign 

affairs, 19 
"German Policy under William 

II.," 103 
interview with Bismarck, 62-3 
introduces Tariff Laws (1902), 273 
land colonisation work in Poland, 

263 
last speech in the Reichstag, 231 
on Bismarck's policy, 11 
on hypothetical politics, 113 
on the aim of French policy, 103 
on the Crown and Parliament, 314 
political views of, 189, 190, 194 
reply to Richter, 52 
retirement of. 298 
Russia, the commercial treaty 

with, and, 297 
Social Democrats and, 220, 235 
speaks at Flottbeck. 290 
speech on international relations 

(Nov., 1906). 9. 10 
speech on Poland. 242 
speech on Spanish-American War, 
45 



Billow, Prince Bernhard von — contd. 
speech on Tariff Reform, 297 
speech on the Eastern Marches, 266 
Tariff Bill (1901), 293 
the Moroccan question, 97 
The Times on, 28 
views on conflict with ;&ngland, 54 



Caprivi, Count, 214, 273 

concessions to Poland, 261 
Caprivi-Marschall economic policy, 

289, 291. 297 
Carol, King, 71 

Caroline Islands, acquisition of, 119 
" Cartel," the, 207, 208, 209. 210, 214 
Catherine II., Empress, 22, 247 
Catholic People's League, the, 164 
Catholics and German politics, 203 

(see also Centre) 
Centre, the (German politics), 197, 

203, 206, 207, 208, 209, 302 
Chamberlain, Rt. Hon. J., 54 
overtures to Germany, 37 
Chatham, Lord, and England's 

danger, 26 
China, a field for German activity, 

117 
German intervention with Japan, 

49 
Shantung Treaty, 117 
Cisleithania, 268 
Clubs and associations in Germany, 

162 
Coastal defences, value of, 24 
Commerce and industry, 274 et seq. 
of Germany to maintain army, 

274, 281 
Commercial power of Germany, 53 

treaties, 291 et seq. 
Congo-Moroccan Treaty, 101, 102 
Conservatives in Germany, 183, 189, 

194, 195, 206, 302 
Constantinople, 74 
Continental power of Germany, 51 
Crimean War, the, 23, 72, 73 
Crispi, Francesco, on the Monarchy, 

312 



Damascus, visit of William II. in 
1898, 100 

Delcasse, M.. French Foreign Minis- 
ter, 95 
resignation of, and result to Ger- 
many, 98 

Denmark, Prussia's advance against 
16 

Dennewitz, centenary celebrations 
at. 277 

Dernbxirg, Herr, 117 

Deutsch - Amerikanische National- 
bund, 46 

Disraeli, Benjamin, on Free Ti'ade, 
275 
on national unity, 169 
on politics, 9 

Dreyfus scandal, the. 145 

Dual Alliance, 78, 79 



328 



Index 



East Prussia, percentage of men fit 
for military service, 280 
(see also Poland, Eastern Marches) 

Eastern Asia, German policy, li8 

Eastern Marches, a prime requisite 
in colonisation, 265 
aim of Prussian policy in, 254, 262 
an important political problem, 268 
Bismarck's national policy in, 258 
Caprivi's concessions, 261 
colonisation of, 244, 260, 262 
conquest of, 245 

failure of work of colonisation, 264 
German population. 265, 266 
Germany's duty and attendant 

difficulties, 266 
results of Prussian policy in, 264 

Education : exchange of teachers in 
German and American universi- 
ties 46 

Edward VII.. King, death of, 34 
diplomacy of, 60 
his policy of isolation, 55 
visits Berlin, 60 

Egypt : Franco-British Treaty, 55, 93 

Elizabeth, Empress, 72 

England, a parliamentary army. 137 
agriculture insufficient for home 

consumption, 287 
aid to Prussia. 21 

and Russia : strained relations, 35 
and the balance of power, 21, 23, 55 
commerce of, compared with that 

of Germany, 109 
Crimean War, 23 
entente cordiale, 23 
fear of German invasion, 54, 222 
Germans in, 251. 299 
Germany's fear of, 29, 30 
her strength at sea, 18, 19 
hide-bound traditions of, 19 
interests in the Far East, 49 
international policy, 25 
Italy's sympathy for, 64 
Japanese Alliance, 23 
jealousy of Germany. 108. 114 
naval supremacy of, 109, 288 
opposes Russian plans. 23 
Parliamentary system of, unsuit- 
able for Germany, 178 
policy of isolation, 55 
question of neutrality in Great 

War, 111 
suspicion of German sea-power and 
development, 20, 27, 34, 38, 39, 40, 
60, 106. 109, 110 
the " mercenary army " of, 135, 137 
the Samoa incident, 34 
treaty with Germany, 120 
unity of, in Great War, xli 
unswerving policy of, 23, 114 

English ententes, 23. 55. 76, 107. 124 

English Press on Mr. Arthur Lee's 
speech, 38. 39 

English trade unions : a tour 
through Germany. 301 

Entente cordiale. the, 23 

Erfla, Freiherr B. von, 116 

Eulenburg, Count Botho, 266 



Europe, Great Powers of, 1, 2 
antagonism to Germany, 10 
Eylau, battle of, 135 



Farmers, German Association of, 163, 
292, 294 
membership, 164 

Far East, the, Germany's " place in 
the sun," 117 
Germany's position in, 44 
Germans in, 299 
in 1895, the, 49 

Fashoda, 31. 105, 106 

Fehrbellin, Battle of. 133, 135, 157 

Fichte, J. G., 308 

Flottwell, President von, 256 

Ford, Sir Clare, on the European 
Concert, 3 

France, a Republican army, 145 
acquires Morocco, 91 
and Egypt, 93 
anxious for conflict with Germany, 

84. 108 
as a Colonial Power, 90, 91 
attitude during Boer War, 30-1 
becomes England's opponent, 22 
campaign against the Church, 152 
entente cordiale with England, 23 
fall of the Monarchy, 145 
Germans in, 251, 299 
her policy of revenge, 86-7 
in the seventeenth century, 130 
Italy and, 64 

loss of Alsace-Lorraine : French re- 
sentment, 80. 83. 84, 91, 105 
Moroccan policy of, 103 
opposition to Germany's political 

power, 8 
policy of, towards Germany, 2 
political constitution of, unsuit- 
able for Germany, 178 
responsible for compulsory mili- 
tary service. 147 
Russia and. 72 et seq. 
Seven Years' War. the, 21 
the irreconcilability of, xlv 
the Revolution — and its lessons, 137 
ultimate aim of her policy, 103 
unanimity of, in Great War, xli, 
xlii 

Franco-British Treaty (1904). 55 

Franco-English alliance, a proposed, 
25 

Franco-German Treaty (1909), 101 

Franco-German War, 73, 84 

Franco-Russian alliance, 78, 80 

Prankfurt-on-the-Main. xliii 

Frankfurt, Peace of, 73. 84 

Franz Joseph and England, 55 

Frederick the Great. 134. 1^ 
and the Empress Elizabeth, 72 
on Poland, 248 
on the Prussian Army, 137 

Frederick William I., King, and 
obligatory military service, 138 
the Jiilich-Cleves question, 136 

Free Trade and agriculture, 275 

French army. 104 



329 



Index 



French Revolution, 87 
Friedland, battle of, 135 



Galicia a Slavonic country, 267 
Gambetta, 82 

on English policy, 114 
German and British sea power, 27 
et seq. 
culture, 251 

militarism, true and false, 147 
Order of Knighthood, 244-6 
victories of 1866 and 1870 due to 
Bismarck's diplomacy, 11 (foot- 
note) 
working man, 225. 226 
German army " an organisation of 
unique perfection," 155 
confidence between officers and 

men, 155 
foundations of discipline, 155 
national unity of, 149 
(c/. Militarism) 
German Empire, coronation of first 
Emperor, 246 
foundation of, 2. 142, 151, 195 
German - Moroccan Commercial 

Treaty (1890), 92 
German Press on English plans of 
isolation, 38 
on Tariff Bill. 294 
German States, military union with 
Prussia, 149 
question of union, 6 
German Technical Hochschule, foun- 
dation of, 264 
Germans and emigration, 12 
duality of character, 181 
in America. 46 
national characteristics of, 7, 158, 

161 
not a political people, 159 
their fiehting instincts, 233 
their need for guidance, 6 
unity of, 153 
GermFvay, a new Navy Bill, 19 
achievements in world war, 164 
adopts organisation of Prussian 

army, 142 
affluence of. 269 
agriculture in, 272, 300, 301 
and England after "War of Spanish 

Succession. 22 
and international politics, 9, 10, 11, 

12 25 
and the Great War, 17, 37 
army, 129 

as a ireat Power, 51 
as promoter of peace. 41 et seq. 
attitude of America in Great War, 

46 
attitude towards England, 22 
Boer War, 30 

building of her navy, 16 et ieq. 
class irreconcilability, 303 
colonial trade (1912), 116 
" colonisation work of centuries " 

lost. 246 
commerce and industry as means 



Germany — continued 

for maintaining armaments, 274, 

281 
commercial treaty with Eussia 

(1904). 291. 297 
culture of, 268, 278. 305 
dangers of industrialism, 279 
desire for constitutional form of 

government, 144 
desire for peace, 77, 85, 114, 324 
Eastern colonisation, 243 
economic development of, 269 et 

seq. 
economic future of, 299 et seq. 
England's antagonistic policy, 56 
English jealousy of, 26 
extension of international rela- 
tions, 44 
forecast of economic situation 

after Great War, 299 
foreign policy, 114 
foreign trade of, 13, 283 
fourth Estate, the. in, 225 
France's policy towards, 2 
future home policy of : an urgent 

task, 304 
her attitude during Russo-Japanese 

War. 78 
her relations with England, 27 et 

seq. 
heroes in the Great War, xl, 37, 143 
history taught as a history of war, 

130 
hopie policy a history of mistakes, 

158 
home policy under the new Empire, 

170 et sea. 
humane and idealistic policy of, 

321 
ideal of world citizenship, 224 
imperfection of home politics, 301 
importance of overseas trade, 14, 15 
imports and exports, 14, 121, 300 
industry in, 278 
influence of William II. on world 

politics, 9 
intensive culture, 289 
international policy defined, 27 
lack of political judgment, 314, 315 
lines of defence, 43 
militarism of, xlvi 
monarchic army of, 138, 153, 156 
Moroccan question, the. 92 et seq. 
Navy Bill, 120 
Navy, the, 14. 15, 16, 28, 38, 41, 42, 

98. 110, 114. 117 
need for self-analysis, 148 
overseas interests of, 18 
party system of. 170 
past history of, 305 
peaceful colonisation, 241 
political aims and discords, 189 et 

seq. 
political deficiencies of, 158 et seq, 
political self-restraint of, 42 
population of, 12 
power in the Great War. 3 
problem of modern international 

politics, 122 



330 



Index 



Germany — continued 
protective tariffs, 291 
rapid industrial growth, 270 
Reinsurance Treaty with Russia, 

xlvi, 76. 77, 78, 79 
relations with Italy, 65 
relations with Japan, 44, 48 
relations with U.S.A., 45-6 
religious struggle in, 152, 168 
separatist tendencies, 311 
Social Democracy in (see Social 

Democrats) 
social legislation, 228 
State differences, 309 
State particularism overcome, 151 
struggle for world power, 1 et seq. 
superiority to France, 86 
task after the Great War, 323 
the Alpha and Omega of her 

national policy, 263 
the object of Prance's predatory 

instincts, 82 
trade with Russia, 81 
transition to world politics, 124 
Treaty with England (1898), 120 
unanimity of. In Great War, 146, 

165 
unification of, 2 
unrivalled exploits, 167 
vogue for associations and clubs, 

162 
volte-face of international policy, 

27 
widespread influence of, 251 
world policy of, 12, 51 et seq. 
world policy of: achievements, 116 

et seq. 
zenith of military prowess, 143 
Gibraltar, the " key of the ocean," 

25 
Giolitti, Signer, 103 
Gneisenau, Count von, 5, 324 
Goethe on German character, 125 

on the Poles, 249 
Goltz, Dr. Freiherr von d., 296 
Gorce, Pierre de la, cited, 35 
Gorres, a memorable saying of, 205 
Gortschakov, Prince, broaches 

Franco-Russian Alliance, 74 
Great Powers and Continental 
policy, 57 
and the unification of Germany, 2 
Great War, America and, 46 
an " unparalleled fight for exist- 
ence," 156 
and Germany's oversea commerce, 

127 
Battle of Tannenberg, 135 
Catholic and Protestant self-eacri- 

flce. 205 
Germany and, 17 

Germany deprived of imports, 288 
industry and, 279 
Italy and, 68 et «eg. 
Japan and, 49 
moral greatness and unbroken 

strength of Germany, 277 
neutral States, xliv 
patriotism of Social Democrats, 220 



Great War — continued 
power of Germany, 3 
solidarity among Anglo-Saxons, 47 
solidity of German nation, 146 
the Allies, 107 
Turkey and, 70 

unanimity of each combatant 
nation, xli, xlii 
Greece, 71 

Greindl, Baron, on English jealousy 
of Germany, 26 
on Germany's maintenance of 

peace, 57 
on the Triple Entente, 58 
Grey, Sir Edward speech in the 

Commons, 33 
Grolmann, General von, 256 
Grossbeeren, 135 



Habsburga, the, downfall in Spain, 

22 
existence of monarchy decided in 

Turkish wars, 131 
Hanover, xliii 
Hardenberg, Herr, 5 
Hatzfeld, Count Paul, Bismarck's 

appreciation of, 120 
Heine, Herr, speech by, 230 
Henckel, Prince Guido, 274 
Henry VII. of Reuss, Prince, 252 
Hereros, rising of the, 116 
Herv6, Gustave, 87 
Hey deb rand, Herr, on world war, 

190, 191 
Hindenburg, Field-Marshal von, xli 

his victory at Tannenberg, 246 
Hofmann, Hermann, 201 
Hohenlohe, Prince Chlodwig, on 

ministerial qualities, 232 
Hohenzollerns, religious views of, 204 
wise statesmanship of the, 3, 132, 

135, 246 
Hollmann, Admiral, 19 
Hubertusburg, Peace of, 25 
Humboldt, Wilhelm von, 5 
Hungarians, Bismarck on, 63 



Imperialism, 237 

India, 239, 240 

Industry and commerce, 264 et seq. 
German, to maintain armaments, 
274, 281 

" Internationale," the, 223, 227 

Ischl, meeting of monarchs at, 55 

Iswolski, M., 107 

Italian Tripoli expedition, 102 

Italy and Bosnian crisis, 57 
and England, 64 
attitude towards Triple Alliance, 

63 
declares war on Austria, 69 
Germany's relations with, 65 
joins Triple Alliance, 61 
leaves Triple Alliance, 68 
relations with Austria, 63 
unity of, in Great War, xlii 
value of Triple Alliance to, 67 



331 



Index 



Jacobins, the, and theoretic politics, 
516 

Japan, conquest of Tslngtau, 118 
English Alliance with, 23 
pTotits in the Great War, 50 
r^ati-ons with Germany, 44, 48 
takes Germany's finest colony, 50 

Japanese War, the, 35 

Jena, battle of, 4, 140 

Jiilich-Oleves question, the, Frederick 
William I. and, 136 

Junker class, the, 192, 193 



Kanitz, Count, 295 
Kardorff, Herr von, 163, 295 
Katzbach, 135 

Kavalla, a quarrel about, 24 
Keller, Gottfried. 163 
Kiao-chau, 117 

The Times on, 117, 118 
Kiderlen-Wachter, Herr von, 101 
Kleist, Heinrich, 157 
Knighthood, German Order of, 244-6 
Koniggratz, battle of, 168, 305 
Koscielski, Herr von, incautious 

speech at Lemberg in 1894, 261 
Kriiger telegram, the, 105, 124 
Kulturkampf, 152, 168 



Labour and Socialism, 225 et seq. 

and the world war, 229 
Lavisse, Ernest, on Alsace-Lorraine, 

82-3 
Lee, Arthur, speech in 1905, 38 
Legnano, battle of, 65 
liBszczinski, King Stanislaus, 248 
Liberalism in Germany, 177, 183, 194, 

195. 196, 206, 302 
Liberation. War of. 4, 165, 254, 276 
Limburg-otirum, Count, 295 
List, Friedrich, 70 
Loe, Field-Marshal von, on religious 

factions in German politics, 205 
Lorraine, xliii 
French resentment at loss of, 80, 

83, 84 91. 105 
Louis XIV., 25, 82, 85, 87 
Ludwig III., King, 81 



Madrid, Treaty of (1880). 92 

Manila : German and American fleets 
during Spanish- American War, 45 

March Revolution, the, 141, 231 

Marianne Islands. 119 

Marlborough's part in War of 
Spanish Succession, 22 

Marschall, Freiherr von, 100 

Marx, Karl, 222, 224, 228 

Mazarin, 130 

Mediterranean : treaty between Eng- 
land and Spain, 55 

Mesopotamia, 121 

Metternich, 2 

Metz, xliii 

Militarism as a cohesive force, 144 
et seq. 



Militarism — continued 
beginnings of, 129 et seq. 
international misconceptions re- 
garding, 147 
the salvation of Germany, 148 
Military service, origin of, 139 
statistics of eligible men, 280 
strength of Germany, 43 
Militarv States and monarchic guid- 
ance, 312, 313 
Mineral production of Germany, 282 
Miquel, Herr von, and the Eastern 
Marches, 262 
parliamentary experience, 162 
Mohammedans : German friendship, 

100 
Moltke, General von, and Germany's 
world power, 8 
on war and peace, 285 
supports Army Bill, 214 
Monarchical government versus par- 
liamentary, 178 
Morocco, England approves French 
attitude, 93. 94 
Franco-British treaty, 55, 93 
French affront to Germany, 39 
French policy, 94 
German policy. 92, 95 
securitv of German interests, 99 
settlement of Franco - German 

Treats (1909), 101 
the Algeciras Coflference, 98, 99 
the open door in, 99, 100 
" Tuniflcation " of, 95, 99 
William II. and, 97 
Miilhausen, 135 



Napoleon I., 82, 88 
admiration for German culture, 

306 
English attitude towards, 21 
fall of, 22 

Germany's " most dangerous 
enemy," 253 
Napoleon III.. 2 

his Italpphil policy, 64 
Napoleonic Empire, foundation of, 

137 
Nassau, xliii 
National German-American Union, 

formation of, 46 
Navy Bill (1900), 126 
Navy League, the, 163 
Netherlands, the. 243 
Neutral nations' hostility to Ger- 
many. 146. 147 
Nicholas I., Emperor, 2, 23 
Nigra, Count, on Italy's relations 
with Austria, 64 



Ollivier, Emile, 321 
Olmiitz, Conference of, 5 



Palestine, visit of William II, in 

1898, 69. 100. 120 
Palmerston, Lord, 2 



332 



Index 



Pan-German Association, the, 163 

Panslavism, 71 

Parliamentary versus monarchical 

government, 178 
Party politics, dangers of, 177 et 

seg. 
Pascal, M., 319, 321 
Peloponnesian War, cause of, 24 
Peter the Great and Russia, 131 
Peters, Carl, 98 

Pitt, William, a memorable saying 
of. 319 
and the French Navy, 25 
Poland, division of, 72, 81, 136. 247, 
249, 251 
German activity in colonisation, 

and counter-activity, 262 
German infiltration of, 237 et seq. 
Law of Settlement. 260 
revolt of 1830. 256 
the struggle for German culture, 
263 
Pole, the, denationalisation of. 258 

et seq. 
Politics and national industry, con- 
nection between, 53 
Politics in Germany : 
armaments, policy of, 212 
"Block," the. 127. 194. 203. 209 
Budget Committee's report, 19 
" Cartel." the, 207, 208, 209, 210, 214 
"Centre." the. 197, 203. 206. 207. 

208. 209, 302 

" Conception of the Universe," 184, 

185, 198 
Conservatism, 183, 189 et seq., 206, 

302 
co-operation of Parties, 195. 196 
General Election of 1907, 196. 197; 

1912, 196. 197 
Junkers, the. 192. 193 
Liberalism, 177. 183, 194. 195. 196. 

206, 302 
Parliamentary system, unsuita- 

bility of, 178 
Party system, 170 
religious factions, 203 
Social Democrats, 183, 196, 207, 208, 

209. 215. 294 
Ultramontane, 183, 302 
weakness of Party systems, 186 
(see also Reichstag) 

Polynesia, 119 

Pomeranian problem, the, 136 
Posadowsky, Count, defines Conser- 
vative policy, 190 
Posen. annexation of, 241, 249 

foundation of Imperial Academy, 
264 

Germans in. 265 

regained by Prussia, 255 

reorganisation of, 257 
Protective tariffs, 291 

(see also Tariffs) 
Protestants and German politics, 203 
Prussia and the Vienna Congress, 22 

before and after the War of Liber- 
ation. 4. 5 

birth-rate in. 279. 28C 



Prussia — continued 

cause of her greatness, 253 

culture, 307 

enters field of Continental politics, 
136 

federation of, 6 

fusion of army with nation, 134 

great wars, 135 

in Napoleonic times, 136 

reorganisation of, o. 4. 5 

Seven Years' War. xliii. 21, 82, 
134, 136, 247. 276 

struggle against political influ- 
ence, 145 

tariff policy of, 5 

the defeat of 1806, 3 

" the greatest Power on the Con- 
tinent," 22 

War of Liberation, 4, 165, 254, 276 
Prussia, Prince Henry of, mission to 

America, 45 
Prussia-Germany, reason for strong 

armaments, 148 
Prussian Army, 134 

in the Great War, 138 

outside sphere of politics, 145, 152, 
153 
Prussian militarism the spirit of 
German army, 143 



Racconigi, 65 

Radowitz, Herr von, 66 

Ranke, Leopold von, " History of 

the World," 307 
Reichstag, Army Bills, 214, 215, 218 

Colonial debates of 1906, 217 

dissolution (1893), 215 

Navy BiUs, 216, 218 

(see also Politics) 
Reinsurance Treaty with Russia, 

xlvi, 76, 77. 78. 79 
Religious wars in Germany, 152, 162 
Renan. Ernest, on philosophy. 321 
Rhineland. the, industry in, 278 
Richelieu, 82, 130 
Richter, Eugen, 126, 214 

on new tariffs : von Billow's reply, 
52 

on tariffs, 294 
Rodbertus, 70 

Roman Catholics and German poli- 
tics, 203 
Roon, Marshal, 8, 152 
Roosevelt, President, 45 
Rosbach, Battle of, 130, 134 
Rosebery, Lord, 111 
Roumania, 70, 71 
Russia, ambitions of, 23 

and Austria-Hungary, xlvi 

commercial treaty with Germany 
(1904). 291. 297 

France and, 72 et seq. 

Germans in, 251, 299 

huge increase of population, 81 

initiation into militarism, 131 

joins England, 50 

strained relations with England, 35 

supports Anglo-French entente, 107 



333 



Index 



Eussia — continued 
trade with Germany, 81 
unity of, in Great War, xlii 
Russian Army ranges itself on side 

of Frederick the Great, 135 
Russo-German understanding (1884), 

76; rupture of (1886), 76 
Russo-Japanese War, 55, 73, 78 
Russo-Turkish War, 73 



St. R6ne-Taillandier, M., 95 
Salisbury, Lord, 37 
Samoan question, amicable settle- 
ment of, 46. 119 
San Giuliano, Marquis, 102, 103 
San Stefano, Peace of, 74 
Sarrant, Albert, on the Great War, 

86 
Saturday Beview, an anti-German 

article (1897), 123 
Saxony industry in, 278 
Scharnhorst, army reforms of, 140, 

141 
Schleiermacher on Germany in 1807, 

213 
Schleswig-Holstein, xliti 
Schwerin-Lowitz, Count, 295 
Sedan, 305 

Selborne, Lord, on Free Trade. 275 
Serbia, economic relations with Ger- 
many, 74 
rises against Austria, 56 
Settlement, Law of, 260 
Seven Years' War. the, xliii, 21, 82, 

134. 136, 247. 276 
Seydlitz, General, 134 
Shantung Treaty, 117 
Sieyes, Abbe, 316 
Silesian question, the, 13fi 
Skierniewice, meeting of Emperors 

at, 76 
Social Democrats in Germany, 183 
and the Great War, xlvii, 220 
Army Bills of 1893 and 1897, 215, 

216 
attitude of, in August, 1914, 221, 

235 
coalition with the " Centre," 207, 

208, 209, 210 
duty of the State. 230 
gains in 1912 elections, 196 
opposition to, in Germany, 211 
patriotism of, 221 
self-isolation of, 225 
societies, 227. 228 
Tariff Bill debate, 294 
the " Internationale," 223 
Utopianisms of, 223 
Soubise routed by Frederick the 

Great, 134 
South-West Africa, 116 
Spahn, Herr. 295 
Spain and Caroline Islands, 119 
downfall of Habsburg rule, 22 
treaty with England. 55 
Spaniards, rebellion of, 4 
Spanish-American War and Ger- 
many, 45 



Spanish Succession, War of, 22, 25. 

130 

Spee, Count. 37 

Staudy. Herr von, 265 

Strasburg, xliii 

Submarine warfare, America and, 
47 

Submarines, value of, in Great War, 
37 

Sudan : settlement between Eng- 
land and France, 106-107 

Sweden, Germans in, 251 

Switzerland, 243 

Sybel, Heinrich von, Bismarck and, 
29 



Taine, M., 325 
Tangier, William II. at, 97 
Tannenberg, Polish victory a 
national disaster for Prussia, 246 

victory of Field-Marshal von Hin- 
denburg, 135, 246 
Tariff Bill, German Press on, 294 

laws of 1902, 273. 289 
Tariffs and Tariff debates. 52, 53, 190, 

191, 286, 294, 301 
Teutoburger Wald, 65 
Thiers, M., 2 
Thirty Years' War, 132 
Tilsit, 4 
Tirpitz, Admiral von, appointed 

Secretary to Admiralty, 19 
Tocqueville, Alexis de, on the French 

character, 88 
Trade unions in Germany, 164, 227, 
301 

number of members, 228 
Trafalgar, Battle of. 22 
Treitschke and German politics, 174 

" German history," 1 

on German States, 147, 306 

on the unity of Germany, 164 
Trieste and the Trentino, 64 
Triple Alliance, 49, 60, 66, 67. 74. 76 

a guarantee of peace, 61 

strength of, 59, 61 
Triple Entente assures the peace of 
Europe. 76 

becomes a solid coalition, 107 

English leadership of, 108 

Russia and, 58 

(see also English ententes) 
Tripoli expedition, 65. 102 
Tsingtau, conquest by Japanese, 118 

German seizure of, 117 

Japan and, 50 
Turco-German relations, 70 
Turkey. Germany's policy, 69, 70 

the " sick man " still vigorous, 70 

value of Bagdad Railway to, in 
Great War. 120 
Tyrolese rebellion, the, 4 



U-boats in Great War, 37 
TJltra-Liberals in Germany, 203. 206. 

294, 302 
United Kingdom (see England) 



334 



Index 



United States of America, relations 
with Germany, 44 
Germans in, 251 

Universal military service, 140, 142, 
147. 149. 153. 154 

Upper Silesia, 259 

UrQuhart, David, on British insu- 
larity, 26 



Vienna. CJon^ress of, 21, 22, 251, 259 
Volkerwanderung, 243, 251, 326 
Voltaire, 134 



"Wagner. Richard. 318 

War. effects on agriculture, 220 

War of Liberation (1813-1815), 4, 165, 

254. 276 
War of Spanish Succession, the, 22, 

25. 130 
Warsaw, Battle of, 247 
Grand Duchy of, 251 
Wartenburg, 135 
Washington, George, 319 
Weddigen, Otto, 37 
Wellington, Duke of. successes in 

Spain, 22 
Welschinger. Henri. 83 
Weltanschauung, 184, 185 
West Prussia, annexation of. 241, 

249 
regained by Prussia, 255 
(see also Poland, Eastern Marches) 



Westphalia, industry of, 275 
Westphalia. Peace of. 132 
Wilbrandt, Adolph. 309 
William I.. Emperor, and federation 
of Germany, 2 
and Prussian Army. 145 
Bismarck and, 6 
William II.. Emperor. 9 
a visit to Tangier, 97 
and overseas interests of Ger- 
many, 18 
dismissal of Prince von Bismarck, 

18, 19 
entertains King Edward VII., 60 
friendship with ex-President 

Roosevelt, 45 
German devotion to, 313 
his devotion to duty, xl 
in Damascus, 100 
on rejection of Navy Bill, 218 
speech at outbreak of Great War, 

220 
visits Palestine, 120 
zeal for amity. Ill 
Witte, Count, and the commercial 

treaty with Russia, 297 
World War (see Great War) 



Torek cited, 5 
Young Turks, the, 69 



Zorndorf, Battle of, 131 



Printed by 
Cassell & Company, Limited, 
La Belle Sauvage, London, E.C 
5. "7. 









"j; 






» -s 



1 ^ *^ 






""^^ <^ '^ -C.N -.;. ^^-. <!>'' 

.. .-. . . - \- ^ '^ • 



o .- k 



.-^^ 



» -^rC . 



rj^ V 



.s?> -n. 



M 



V x^ 



^^ % 



• y . .. s " . o 
3- ^ *. '-^^ 





^' 






-■ ' ^° 


r. 




'''^. 






f* 






^ ^t. 













-z^ 






I 



^ -Tj. ' ^ ~ \^ Deacidifted using the Bookkeeper process. 

^ -*- ' " ^ ' Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 

Treatment Date: » m om4 

<^. • ^^^ PreservationTechnologies 

^'S\ ..\V .- ^ A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

111 Thomson Park Dfive 
Cranberry Township. PA 16066 
(724) 779-2111 ^ 





-~ 


- 


x^ 


^^ 


.•^' 

V 






A^ 


^/>. 


- 





. s tO ^^ -^ « V. 












"3^ 
•1=^ 












_^ • - ><. ^x,^-^'^ 



■^0^ - " -■^' 



^1^. ^ * « 



7 -f^ >j 









^ ' S S ' « / '0' ' 









^^y 



^' 



c " 



-^ -r.. 4" '^^. 






-^s^ 



.A 






-r-:,. v^' ^ '^^- v^' 



.V .r> 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




007 671 130 6 4 



